


what’s waited till tomorrow starts tonight

by theragingstorm



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman and Robin (Comics), DCU, Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Arab Character, Bittersweet, Character(s) of Color, Circus, F/M, Family, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Gen, Homophobia, LGBTQ Themes, Love, Past Child Abuse, Platonic Relationships, Post-Crisis, Pre-Flashpoint, Racism, Romani Characters, Some Romance, Time Travel, canon character death, mostly - Freeform, very slight mixing of canons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2019-11-08 04:40:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 45,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17974679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theragingstorm/pseuds/theragingstorm
Summary: After an argument with his Batman, Dick Grayson, Damian finds himself in Dick’s past, with one of his greatest tragedies fast approaching and no easy route forward for either. As long as he risks being stuck seventeen years in the past, all he can do is live at the circus, with a family he never knew — and just maybe learn from it all.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> About time I wrote something Dick-and-Damian-centric.
> 
> Title from “From Now On” from The Greatest Showman.

The ride back to the Batcave was spent in furious silence.

Damian slouched down as far as he could in the passenger seat, refusing to turn his head to the left. Wet snow pattered the windows of the Batmobile, cold winds buffeting the city outside, the windshield wipers before him moving back and forth in monotonous rhythm. Out of the corner of his eye, he could still see Batman’s fingers clenched tight over the steering wheel, see the white lenses on his cowl narrowed to slits. His mouth was tight, his jaw clenched.

Damian glared out the window at the cold city night, refusing to give credence to Dick Grayson’s anger.

It wasn’t until they pulled into the Cave, screeching so harshly to a stop that they startled a cloud of bats from the ceiling, that Dick finally spoke again.

“Get out.”

Damian bristled, all but kicking the car door open.

“Happy to.”

Much to his disgust, he saw immediately that they weren’t alone in the Cave. As he approached the computer hub, he noticed the crowd that had gathered around it: Alfred Pennyworth, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and an eyebrow raised high; Barbara Gordon, looking at him around the back of her wheelchair with a face like thunder; even Stephanie Brown in her gaudy Batgirl suit, fidgeting like she really didn’t want to be there.

Well, he didn’t want her to be there either. It was hard enough tolerating, and sometimes working alongside, those two women when they _didn’t_ have to bear witness to his humiliation.

Dick took off his cowl, turning to face their audience.

“We managed to recover Booster Gold’s stolen technology,” he announced to them. “But as you all heard over the coms, we _didn’t_ catch the thieves, because Robin here took it upon himself to punish one of them as he saw fit and so let the others get away.”

Barbara rolled her eyes. Stephanie tilted her head to the side, her brow furrowing.

“Punish them how? We, uh, were unclear on that part.”

“It was nothing worth his overreaction,” Damian snapped, but Dick cut him off.

“The man had already surrendered and was willing to talk, but he still beat him around the chest with a lead pipe. Shattered his collarbone and broke three ribs. Put him into shock. He’s in the hospital, and the other thieves are still out there, and we don’t know whether they were hired or why they set out to steal time tech.” Dick turned the look of fury back at Damian. “That’s going to be another two weeks’ worth of investigation, at least, because you couldn’t control yourself.”

The women exchanged looks, and Alfred sighed. Damian’s fury spiked higher.

“I was _completely_ in control of myself,” he spat back. “You were the one who saw and did nothing about how he still had a loaded gun within his reach when he ‘surrendered.’ You just weren’t willing to believe that he was faking it, because you’re a softhearted sentimental fool.”

“I’ve spent decades learning to read people, and I know when someone’s faking it. More importantly, the fact still remains that you let the others get away, and you abused someone at our mercy!” Dick was shouting again. “You _do not_ attack someone after they’ve surrendered and laid down their weapon, Damian!”

“You’re an idiot if you’re willing to trust a criminal’s word over my judgement!” Damian shouted right back, standing up as tall as he could. The blue eyes before him, always so full of emotion, were burning with fury, but he refused to back down. “Our mercy means nothing if we could be attacked! Besides, what do you care? He’s just a thief! If he’s in the hospital, so be it, if we live another day!”

“Damian Ibn al Xu'ffasch al Ghul Wayne, you listen to me. We seek justice. Not vengeance. Not pain just for the sake of it. We only hurt people who hurt others. And other people’s lives have value. Ours are _not_ automatically more important than theirs, even if you think they come from a lesser place.”

Damian just scoffed.

Dick drew back for a moment. Then he came back with a vengeance.

“Fine. Between your deliberately disobeying my orders, and your flippancy towards other people’s livelihoods, you’re grounded for two weeks. You don’t leave the Manor grounds except for patrol, and you don’t go on patrol without me or Batgirl accompanying you.”

Stephanie grimaced.

“What’s more, during those two weeks, you’ll be spending all that time on the Manor helping out. Clearing the snow, salting the driveway, vacuuming the floors, dusting the furniture, mopping the foyer, and doing the dishes after meals. By hand.”

Damian recoiled, staring back at him in horror.

“But — but that’s servant’s work!” He pointed at Alfred. “That’s _his_ work!”

“Yes, I’m aware,” Alfred muttered.

“That’s chores. Plenty of kids your age have to do all of that and more.”

“I am not children my age,” he snapped, tossing his head back. “This is a waste of my time, and I am above it.”

“Get one thing through your head, Damian.” Dick looked him square in the eye. “You are not above the work of other people, and you are not above acting like a decent human being to them. Maybe this way you can learn a little humility.”

Damian stared at him, still incredulous at the unfairness of it all. He watched as Dick moved past the others and towards the elevator, before finally managing to shout at his retreating back:

“You’re pathetic, Grayson! You’re not worthy of my father’s cowl, you weren’t even worthy of his pity! You’re not his son, you’re not Batman, you’re nothing but a shadow of the real thing, a placeholder! He should’ve left you with your dead parents, for that’s all you’re worth, the dust they scrubbed a meager, meaningless living from and shattered to bloody pieces on!”

Stephanie audibly gasped as Dick wheeled around. Damian expected to see rage in those eyes, but instead he saw deep, genuine hurt. He’d truly struck a nerve.

 _Good,_  he thought.

“And you’re an arrogant, petulant, spoiled little brat.” Dick’s eyes were still brimming with pain, but his voice was cold. “You don’t want to be treated like a thoughtless child? Don’t act like one.”

His cape wheeled out behind him, and the elevator doors clapped shut in his wake.

Damian yanked open the trunk of the Batmobile, taking out the pieces of future technology. Assortments from Booster’s car. Time technology.

Stephanie sighed.

“Jesus Christ, kid. What the fuck’s wrong with you, bringing up his parents?”

“What do I care about circus trash? Or the opinion of the girl who singlehandedly started a gang war?”

“Alright, you know, you can insult me all you want, but at least _I’m_ not going to be grouting tiles in the fifty million bathrooms for two weeks,” Stephanie retorted.

Damian took the components to the nearest evidence table, beginning to piece them together.

“And another thing.” This time, it was Barbara who spoke. “You say you value expertise, but we’ve been crimefighting for years, and you haven’t even been doing it for five months. So what is it, Damian? Do you just not want to acquiesce to _anyone_? Is being a tyrant only okay when a superior being like an al Ghul does it?”

He was getting supremely sick of their nagging.

“Tt. That’s funny. What would a cripple know of superior beings?”

Someone in a wheelchair could, apparently, sneak up on someone much more quickly than they might expect. Her strong fingers and blunt nails pinched the folds of his ear, dragging his head back, making him yelp in a very undignified way and jostle the components.

“This ‘cripple’ holds your life in her hands every time you put on that uniform, kid. You are _extremely_ lucky that Dick cares about you and believes in you, and yet you take that faith he has in you and throw it back in his face. You say he’s not worthy of the cowl? I personally don’t think you’re worthy of that ‘R’ you wear. But _he_ says that you’re worth the chance we’re all taking on you.”

“Grayson doesn’t care about me — let go, woman —”

“He does, and _you’re_ the fool for not seeing that. You are just like the rest of us, and that’s because you, like us, would be far, far worse off without Dick Grayson. You may not think you need to respect anyone you think is below you, but you sure as hell do.”

She finally let go, rolling away. Stephanie joined her halfway, the two of them going to the elevator as well. He rubbed his ear, thinking spitefully that that woman didn’t hold a candle to his mother, who had _deserved_ the love of a Batman. No other woman deserved the respect his mother did.

“Very well, Master Damian,” Alfred decided at last. “You should go to bed. Tomorrow I shall show you how to operate the snowblower.”

“I shall not go to bed, Pennyworth.” He pieced together the last of the components, so angry that he didn’t notice their slight humming and glowing. “I shall do what I please.”

“No, you shall _not_. But perhaps soon we can start treating you with the assumption that you’re mature. As in, perhaps when you turn eighteen.”

He wheeled, accidentally hitting the components with the back of his hand. The humming began to grow to a crescendo.

“I am not a child! I need none of you, Pennyworth! I do not need the people in this city! I do not need this broken facsimile of a family! And I certainly do not need that poor excuse for a human being running around in my father’s cowl! I do not and never will need Richard John —”

The glowing turned into a brilliant flash —

— blinding, overpowering light —

— and for a few long, long moments, the light was all Damian saw.

 

* * *

 

He opened his eyes to the night sky. An endless, untouched sprawl of blue-black flecked with showers of silver stars, framed with the gently moving silhouettes of palm trees —

Palm trees?

Damian sat bolt upright. Concrete crunched beneath him as he took a moment to get his bearings.

Despite the fact that he had just been in New Jersey in late winter, the night was mild and slightly humid. Instead of the Batcave, or even the Gotham City skyline, sprawled beneath him were the low, flat, sloping buildings of a medium-sized town. Nearby, he could hear the soft rhythmic rush of the ocean, and sure enough, the palm trees lining the streets grew up taller than some of the buildings themselves.

He stared for a moment.

Then he got to his feet, clambering over to the nearby fire escape and making his way down the the front of the store he’d been on the roof of. _Sunny Days Clothing Boutique_ , the sign read, right above _Closed_.

Damian looked down at his Robin uniform.

Then he was bending down and picking the lock, carefully looking around to make sure nobody was coming, then opening the door and slipping inside. He quickly darted over to the boys’ section, taking items off the rack and changing right there into black jeans, high-tops, and a plain black t-shirt, shuddering at the cheapness of the clothing as he dressed. He then shoved his uniform into a large shopping bag, about to take his leave...

But something made him hesitate.

Even as he scoffed at the instinct, he took two hundred-dollar bills, out of the twenty-five he kept with him at all times, out of his utility belt and laid them at the cash register.

Then he finally crept out of the store, darting along the streets, looking for something to indicate where the hell he was, finally getting it in the form of a newspaper stand already lined with the next day’s issue.

He snatched one up.

 _The Coconut Grove Daily Chronicle_ , read the title, a sub-header indicating that this was the town of Coconut Grove, Florida, and then below that, the date.

_March 1st._

He breathed a sigh of relief.

_2002._

The sigh became a choked gasp; his eyes bulged as he stared in horror.

“Damn Booster Gold and his infernal time technology!” he yelled, throwing the paper back like it was a snake, backing up so hard he nearly tripped. “Damn that enterprising fool and those thieves to hell!”

A homeless woman pushing a shopping cart full of plastic flamingoes gave him a nasty look.

“Hey kid,” she said in a nasally voice, “if you’re gonna scream about frickin’ time technology or whatever, go do it with the other circus freaks.”

“Mind your tongue, I’m not in the mood,” he growled, clenching his hands. “How in the hell am I going to get back?”

“To the freaks?” the woman scoffed, running a dirty hand through her grizzled hair. One of her flamingos was missing an eye. “They’re right on the outskirts of town, doncha know that? Frickin’ circus. Every winter they pass through, and what do they do for normal people like me?”

Something she’d said gave him pause. He turned and faced her, unclenching his fists.

“There’s an actual circus outside this town?”

“Yuh-huh. Camping for the winter, or somethin’ like that. Been coming every year since before my grandma was born. With your ranting, you’d fit right in, ‘stead of if you stayed with us normals.”

With that, she readjusted her flamingos and her plastic-bag dress, and kept on walking.

Damian was sure that she was certifiably insane, but what she said made sense, in a way. If he stayed in the town for the night, he would get a lot of questions. If he stayed out of town, near the circus, people were less likely to question a strange person’s presence. He knew that the Justice League had very recently been founded at that point, but they had already fought a few battles together, already built their original base. So he would sleep outside for the night, then in the morning, figure out a path to Washington D.C. so that he could rummage around the Hall of Justice for a way to get back to his own time. The League, especially in their early days, were very fond of collecting trophies; they were bound to have something related to time travel.

So he had a plan. Some of the anger and misery faded as he trudged across the town, turning through the streets away from the center.

But the time stretched on.

The sky began to grow lighter.

Damian chided himself for letting his eyelids grow heavy. He had faced far worse tests of his endurance than simply walking all night.

The buildings’ clusters began to grow thinner, the houses began to look worse-kept. The road he was following had weeds growing along the side, the silhouettes of trees bent down against the blueing sky. The stars looked fainter, and there was a small strip of silver along the base of the horizon.

Damian sat down in a patch of grass, not really seeing what was ahead. His anger had now been completely replaced by tiredness. He shut his eyes for a moment, just to rest his aching lids...

...and awoke to blinding sunlight and a silhouetted form bending over him.

Damian was on his feet in an instant, yelling, lunging, and pinning the potential threat down to the ground by the throat.

“Ow!” complained the potential threat in a very high-pitched voice. “That hurt!”

Damian blinked hard.

He had a small boy pinned by the throat. A skinny little brat with thick, slightly curly black hair, round cheeks, and bronzed skin. His jeans were worn and ripped, his sneakers’ soles were rubbed flat, and his yellow t-shirt had faded almost to cream-colored. His face was screwed up, eyes closed, as he reached one hand up to rub his head. Damian noticed that the little urchin had his nails close-cropped, his palms and fingers oddly calloused, like he spent a lot of time working with his hands.

“Why the hell were you bent over me like that?” he demanded. “What do you want from me? Food? Money?”

“What? No. I was just worried. And maybe kind of curious. You were kind of passed out in the grass with nothing on you,” the urchin squeaked. “Are you homeless? Did you get robbed?”

“None of your business! Now, I’m looking for —”

Much to his shock, the urchin quickly bent his knees all the way up to his nose, pushing Damian off him with his feet; then somersaulted backwards, wriggling easily out of his grip. He then bounced to his feet, bending his head down as he dusted off his worn clothes.

“Man. You need to learn some manners,” he said brightly.

“I have no interest in what a little brat such as yourself thinks I should —”

The boy looked up, blinking. Damian’s whole world seemed to screech to a stop.

Those eyes. He knew those eyes. He had just seen those eyes.

“— should...should...should... _Grayson?_ ”

His partner, his father’s ward, his Batman, Dick Grayson, seventeen years younger, inclined his head to the side.

“How did you know my name?”

Damian stared. Maybe he was wrong. But no. There was no mistaking it. That was the same way Dick Grayson tilted his head and furrowed his brow before he asked a question. His hair curled at the ends the same. His nose looked the same. His eyes, of course, were the same shape, had the same long lashes, and the irises were the same vivid shade of blue.

“Helloooo? Why are you looking at me like that? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Damian started.

“Ah, um, yes. I saw your family’s name on a flyer, and I assumed that you were from the circus. Because I _am_ near the circus, correct?”

“Oh yeah!” Dick nodded vigorously. “We’re just down the road. I’m heading back now, do you want to come with?”

Damian couldn’t stop looking at the boy version of the man he knew. He looked and acted so familiar yet so completely alien it gave him vertigo. It was a horrible feeling, the contrast for some reason making his head hurt and his gut ache with melancholy.

What was more, going with him seemed like a terrible idea. He could permanently affect the timeline this way. He had planned on sleeping near the circus, not going right to it, not going right to what had to be no circus other than Haly’s, Dick Grayson’s birthplace and childhood home.

But on the other hand, he was already on the outskirts of town. It had taken half the night to walk there, far longer than he’d expected. He would be far more able to acquire some means of transportation out of town if an adult in the circus could drive him to a bus stop or train station, instead of having to wander around blindly in a time before having GPS on one’s phone.

“Yes, I’ll come with you.”

“Cool!” Dick laughed. Then he added seriously: “I probably shouldn’t invite you over, since you pinned me down and stuff. But you’re weird. And I like that.”

He then took off at a run, leaving Damian to follow him, to wonder at that remark.

 

* * *

 

He had never actually seen a circus before. Much less a circus resting at its winter grounds.

So he was completely surprised to see the big top and surrounding tents, looming like mountains of red fabric over the endless expanse of green field. The two smaller tents framed the big top, and beyond that was a surrounding forest of trailers that ringed the rest of the circus. Train cars loitered at the very edge of the grounds, with tracks stretching endlessly both due north and north-west. Several huge rings of sawdust framed the figures of animals and their trainers, with more great, hulking shapes that appeared to be tethered near the tents. People, both in costume and out, milled about around the grounds, and indeed, it was _C.C. Haly & Norton Bros. Circus_ that was painted on the train cars and proclaimed over the gates in gold letters. 

A few houses were at the very end of the road, a few hundred yards from the gates, featuring ordinary people who were watering their flowers or trimming their trees, seemingly used to the spectacle nearby. Several of them smiled indulgently at Dick as he raced past.

“There he goes,” Damian heard one woman murmur to her friend. “I swear Ellen, that little boy has so much charm and talent, he’s going to be even more famous than his parents someday.”

Before he knew it, he found himself through the gates, gazing directly up at the tents. A blonde woman in pink tights offered them a smile; a man with doves resting on his shoulders chatted with a pair of Siamese twins; a man covered up to his eyeballs in tattoos meandered past an old crone in red robes; a pair of women in black and white outfits, respectively, chattered with each other as they passed by. Damian was still so dizzied by the size and unfamiliarity of the setup that by the time he realized that Dick had raced past him, and was disappearing into the sea of trailers before them, he was already far out of reach.

“Grayson!” he howled after him.

“Don’t worry!” His voice was faint. “I’m just getting my mom. Sit tight!”

And then the small figure vanished.

Damian stomped his foot.

“عليه اللعنة!”

Then he sank down to the grass again, not quite realizing how close he was to the spikes that held the tent’s tethers. Not really registering the sudden shouts of a few of the laborers as he sulked, yanking up handfuls of grass as he privately cursed Grayson and his need to always do things his way. In fact, he didn’t notice something was off at all until another massive shadow was suddenly looming over him.

Damian whipped around and gasped.

He had never seen an elephant up close before either.

The great gray beast that stood above him regarded him with an innocent, intelligent curiosity not unlike young Dick’s. Its legs were as thick as tree trunks, it stood tall enough to dwarf any man, let alone a boy of his age. It blinked slowly, flapping ears the size of platters, as he gaped.

His heart began to thunder in his chest as he stared at the elephant. For a few moments, neither of them moved.

Then it reached out a long, wrinkled trunk, touching his face.

Damian felt an odd swell as his heart kept beating rapidly, felt awestruck, felt almost...tender. The elephant blinked again, eyes like warm black pools, regarding him as it almost stroked his face.

The last of his frustration completely fell away.

“Damn it, Zitka! Stay in one place for once, you great big un-ironed sheet!”

Zitka looked unbothered by the keeper’s outburst, not even turning to face him as he came running over. He was a tall, slightly chubby middle-aged man with thick ginger hair and a matching beard, his gray eyes narrowed against the bright morning sun. His faint accent sounded French, but distorted somewhat.

“Honestly, you ridiculous animal.” He picked up the rope that Zitka had pulled undone, shaking his head. “You’re more trouble than the kids.”

“Not much of an elephant trainer, are you Otto?” a nearby youngish woman in a green sari laughed.

“Shut it, Shanti,” he grumbled good-naturedly, petting Zitka’s side. Then his gaze turned towards Damian, gray eyes suddenly lit with curiosity. “Hey. Who might you be, young man?”

Damian automatically bristled. The woman in green, Shanti, spotted him and moved closer, accompanied by several other individuals in bright colors. He got to his feet, moving them into a defensive pose, noting the musculature in the arms and legs of many of the people before him, noting the healthy mix of both men and women and the multitude of ethnicities.

Shanti, with her languorous eyes and hawklike nose, her green sari edged with gold thread, smelt distinctly of reptiles. A different, shorter woman with long coffee-brown hair — _another Arab,_ part of him latched onto — wore a white tank top and cargo pants and wielded a vicious-looking bullwhip. One mustachioed, dark-skinned bald man whose jeans could’ve carpeted an entire floor folded his massive arms; he appeared tall and powerful enough to crush steel like tinfoil. Otto the elephant trainer had a massive, swift beast at his beck and call.

“I’m only passing through,” he said haughtily, still prepared should one of them turn out to be hostile.

“Hey, we’re not upset by you being here. I mean, you did come in with Dick,” said the Arab woman with the bullwhip. Her accent was pure Brooklyn native, much to his surprise. “God knows that kid has great taste.”

“Tt. I beg to differ, he’s clearly a hyperactive maniac.”

“He’s that too,” admitted the strongman while Shanti laughed. “That kid hasn’t stopped moving since he was still inside his mama.”

“Oh, Mary and John knew what they were getting into,” said Otto fondly, still petting Zitka’s side. The elephant flapped its ears, almost like an acknowledgment. “That family just keeps growing, and most times, it’s just that crazy, daredevil Grayson blood that manifests in ‘em. But this one’s got his mother in him too, and honestly, nobody except them saw that coming.”

“And don’t you forget it, Otto.”

When Damian turned to find the source of the new voice, he again looked into those familiar eyes. He gasped and started.

The woman before him had faded blue jeans and a light jacket over her lilac tank top. She was in her mid-thirties; golden-skinned, short and compact, with strong arms and calloused hands. Her abundant black curls were tied back into a ponytail, and it was Dick Grayson’s features that were etched into her face.

Damian had previously scoffed when women called Dick feminine terms like “pretty,” “gorgeous,” “beautiful,” or any variation of such. But he had to admit, he looked a _lot_ like his mother: elegant dark brows, sculpted cheekbones, defined jaw, full lips, and of course, long thick lashes framing familiar sky-blue eyes. And he supposed he could objectively see why those features might be considered pleasant.

But when Mary smiled at him, it almost made him shudder to see that smile, that face, on her and not her son.

“You must be the one Dick found. He was very excited to meet you.”

She offered her hand and he unconsciously took it, feeling the roughness of her palm and fingers.

“I’m Mary Grayson.” _I know,_  he thought. “What’s your name?”

Damian momentarily panicked.

“Um...Fida. Fida Himay.”

“Those are two damn idealistic names,” the Arab woman remarked.

“Yes. My, um, father is a big believer in the qualities — that are my names. Yes.” He privately cursed himself.

But Mary only nodded.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Fida. This here is Otto Dubois —” Otto inclined his chin, “— Shanti Singh —” Shanti twirled her fingers in a small wave, “— Noor al Abbas —” The Arab woman lifted her whip as a kind of salute, “— and Samson Jones.” The strongman beamed, showing very white teeth. “There’re a lot of names around here, but you’ll get the hang of it.”

“I’m just passing through,” he said again, but Mary put her hand on his shoulder anyway.

“It’s too late for breakfast now, but come with me and I can fix you some lunch.”

Damian had been trained to be able to keep going for a week with no food if he needed to. But he still hadn’t eaten in eighteen hours, and he had to admit that he would function better if his stomach wasn’t empty.

“I...I suppose I’ll have some lunch.”

Otto, Shanti, Noor, and Samson gave Mary quick goodbyes as she escorted Damian fifty feet or so to her trailer. Shock hit him again when he saw it.

“ _This_ is where you _live!?_ ” he shouted incredulously.

It was little bigger than an RV. The exterior was painted in rusty red, and then with European floral designs, all clearly hand-done. The steps to the inside was set with cheap strings of lights, and the whole place looked rickety enough to fall apart in the onset of the next Florida storm.

Mary frowned at his outburst.

“Don’t be rude. It may be small, but it’s functional. And not all of us have thousands in cash lying around for a down payment on some big fancy place, you know.”

Thousands? They didn’t even have _thousands_ to spare?

Damian was successfully quieted by that, just in time for a man emerge from the doorway.

“I take it this is our guest?” he inquired, grinning in a crooked, playful sort of way.

At first glance, unlike his wife, John Grayson barely resembled his son. He was darker-skinned; he had a broader jaw, a longer nose, a thin mustache, and his eyes were honey-brown. But he was about the same height that Dick would grow to be, with a similar lean, strong physique. His thick black hair swept to the side the same way Dick’s did. And though he was big for an acrobat, he was so light on his feet that the stairs didn’t even creak as he came down; as graceful as his wife, as graceful as his son would be.

“John, this is Fida Himay. Fida, this is my husband.”

John’s cargo work pants were thoroughly worn, and his white t-shirt was frayed at the hem. As he bent to look Damian in the face, his mustache twitched upwards.

“I’ve been around Noor long enough to know an Arabic name when I hear it. But I swear, kiddo, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were Dick’s brother.”

Damian tensed, sucking in a sharp breath.

“What — what did you say?”

“You could be Dick’s brother.” John’s warm dark eyes sparkled, completely free of guile. “Heh, even the look on your face, it’s the same one he gets when we say he can’t have dessert.”

“John, don’t tease him,” Mary chided as Damian managed to say: “I’m Arab, Chinese, and Jewish, not — not like you.”

“Doesn’t mean you couldn’t be Dick’s brother.” John straightened up again. “Now, come on inside! We’ve got all sorts to eat, and Mary’s the best cook this side of the Atlantic.”

“Oh come on, John, please...”

He lifted an eyebrow at his wife, before suddenly wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her close, rubbing the tip of his nose against hers. She laughed, dipping her head so that he pressed a kiss to her forehead, letting her brace her hands on his shoulders. Her wedding ring glinted in the tropical sunshine, both of them haloed in the golden light.

Damian felt something as he looked at them, like there was a deep, aching faultline in his chest, and the earth had moved that fault a little further open. He shook his head, disgusted with himself.

“Hey!” piped Dick’s voice from inside. Seventeen years younger. “Mom! Dad! Quit being gross and come inside! I’m hungry, and I wanna talk to my new friend!”

Another part of him ached at that cheerful young voice.

He shook his head harder, straightening his shoulders and marching to the steps, his feet banging up the stairway, heading towards the doorway with every muscle of his body stiff and with two long-dead, smiling ghosts behind him.

“Just passing through,” he whispered to himself like a mantra.

Damian took another breath and walked through the trailer doorway.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very happy birthday to our own Dick Grayson.

Damian sat at the tiny dining table cramped into the side of the trailer, and he watched two dead people fix lunch and coffee.

John measured out ground beans and water with surprising methodicalness, the smile lines around his eyes deepening as he hummed something unfamiliar. Mary had pulled a pot of leftover soup out of the small fridge, and was heating it up over the wheezing gas stove. Having shed her jacket, her black curls all but burst out of her ponytail like a bouquet of lilacs, caressing her exposed brown back. Powerful muscles moved deceptively gently under that soft-looking hair and skin; that hidden power reminded him of Stephanie, who fought like a vicious scrapper despite being softer-looking than the rest of their allies, and of Cassandra (though he’d only seen photos), who was tiny and unassuming and whose hand-to-hand skills were legendary, and of Dick’s friend, the silky-haired kind-faced woman in silver jewelry and a sparkly black uniform, who wielded her sword and lasso with the raw strength of a true Amazon.

Women were confounding.

“Mooom,” Dick whined, drumming the heels of his feet against the trailer floor. He was seated across the table from Damian, but there were only about two feet of space between them. “Hurry upppp.”

“I don’t control how fast the soup heats up, Richard,” she returned. “And I don’t control the burnt layer we’ll get on the bottom of the pot if you ask me to turn the stove up and it heats too quickly.”

Dick pouted, but he stopped complaining.

“So, Fida. Where are you from?” John asked, pressing the button on the coffee maker. It spluttered and groaned for several seconds before reluctantly starting to drip.

Damian, in the meantime, folded his arms and slumped down in his rickety Target chair.

“None of your business.”

The two elder Graysons exchanged looks. Damian avoided looking at them, instead looked around at the soft green walls, the scuffed plastic of the table, the piles of books that were stacked everywhere in lieu of furniture. A red Nintendo that was very clearly used rested atop a heap of crime novels, and a potted cactus rested atop a mix of Terry Pratchett, Louise Erdrich, Margaret Atwood, and the entire Harry Potter series.

“How old are you?”

“Eleven, as of recently.”

“I’m nine!” Dick piped. “That’s basically the same age!”

“You are _not_ nine,” Damian scoffed.

“I’m gonna be nine in just less than three weeks,” Dick amended. Damian knew this. He knew Dick’s birthday was on the 20th of March, that in seventeen years to the day he would be just less than three weeks from turning twenty-six. “So it counts.”

“It does not.”

“Does too!”

“How did you know Dick wasn’t nine yet?” Mary asked.

“...He looks like he’s six,” Damian said hurriedly, cursing himself for the near slip-up. “Honestly. Look at him. He’s scrawny.”

“I am not!” Dick squeaked indignantly, which was about as scary as getting yelled at by a cupcake. Why on Earth the Batman himself had decided to make this pathetic-looking little runt his partner was absolutely beyond Damian.

“Yes you are. And you have ears like a fruit bat.”

Dick’s ears were a bit too big for his head, which he registered was true and immediately clapped his hands over them.

“Yeah, well, your hair looks like a hedgehog that got struck by lighting, your face looks like you’ve got something nasty under your nose all the time, and are you sure you’re eleven? ‘Cause you’re shorter than a ten-year-old,” he retorted.

Damian gaped at him for a moment, then took a breath to _really_ let him have it.

“Both of you...” Without turning around, Mary raised a bread knife. “If I turn around and you’re still squabbling, you’re gonna regret it.”

Dick shut up and huffed again with no real regret, but without her meaning to, the metallic gleam of her raised knife had made Damian’s insides clench. An involuntary freezing, that made him swallow and straighten up like a good soldier-prince; he had to swallow “Yes, Grandfather” from where it had risen to his lips.

John clearly saw this. Some of the merriness left his eyes; he regarded Damian like he was seeing him again for the first time, then leaned in close to his wife and murmured something to her.

Mary lowered the knife. When she turned around, instead of the blade, she was bearing a board full of sliced homemade bread. She maneuvered around one of the rickety chairs, which was dangerously close to her workspace as it was, before setting the bread down before the two boys. Soon she was also placing chipped bowls of lamb stew before them, swimming with vegetables, rice, and parsley, before sitting down with her and her husband’s lunches.

John came over next with the coffee, black for his wife, which he presented to her with a cheek kiss, and clouded with milk for himself. He and Mary sat in between the two boys, and Damian felt uncomfortably scrutinized.

“Can I have a cup of coffee too?” he blurted.

“I don’t see why not. Must’ve been younger than Dick when my old _dat_ let me start drinking it.”

John poured him one, and Damian immediately took a long draught to avoid those concerned eyes.

“‘ _Dat_ ’?” he echoed at last. By then, the Graysons had started eating. John seemed to become cheerful again as he dunked his bread in the stew, and Mary blew on each spoonful delicately.

Dick was not nearly as refined as his mother.

“Ish rom’ni cheh foh ‘Dah,’” he explained, his mouth full to bursting with half-chewed lamb and carrots. Damian made a disgusted face, to which Dick stuck his tongue out at him, showing him more masticated food, before he swallowed and repeated: “It’s _řomani_ _čhib_ for ‘Dad.’ In this case, _his_ dad, _my_ grandpa.”

“Interesting. Perhaps when you master linguistics, you can try working on your table manners.” Damian took a mouthful of soup, and was surprised to find that he really liked it. The meat was tender near to the point of falling apart, the vegetables were pleasantly soft, and the broth, and everything within, all but burst with flavor. He then addressed John. “So are you and your wife both gypsies, then?”

The air suddenly became frosty. Dick twisted his head away, turning red; John and Mary turned twin stares on him.

“What?”

“We’d appreciate it if you didn’t use that word,” John said slowly, his gaze unexpectedly steely. “I can understand that a lot of other Americans don’t know the full history behind it, but...”

“But it’s a slur,” Mary said bluntly. Her eyes were like the blue flames on the stove; rippling low and hot.

“Since when?” he demanded. But faced with those expressions, he was finding it hard to keep his conviction.

“Since pretty much always,” Dick spoke up, his voice unusually quiet. “Some _gadje_ thought we were originally from Egypt instead of India, and, um, the name stuck. Sorta became the n-word for us. There really aren’t any words for ‘Roma’ or ‘Romani’ in some European languages, just ‘gypsy.’ Kinda sucks when that’s always what gets thrown around on both sides of the pond.”

“But...I thought it was just the name for you people.”

He sounded pathetic even to himself. John shook his head.

“You’ll still hear it, of course. Folks don’t know any better.”

“They should,” Mary growled into her coffee cup. Damian started at her. “It’s the twenty-first century. They have no right to call us thieves and beggars any more than they have the right to call —” She looked at Damian, then didn’t finish her sentence.

“Aren’t some of you thieves and beggars, though?”

“You should think about how many of us back in Europe are poor as all hell before you ask that,” John replied quietly. He rested his chin on his big, rough hand. “Lots of black folks here in America are poor because they were enslaved in this country. Well, lots of our people were enslaved in Romania. Same kind of result. Even in countries where we weren’t, _gadje_ always made life hard for us, what with the system keeping us poor, people blaming us for crimes and diseases, other people killing us...”

Damian felt oddly subdued; he let his shoulders slump again. Mary’s fiery expression died down a little bit. John sighed.

“Fida, I’m sorry. I don’t want to traumatize you, and I’m sure your ancestors couldn’t have had it easy either. But please understand where we’re coming from.”

Dick finally lifted his head. Damian found it hard to look at him.

“Were those...” He cleared his throat, trying to bring his voice back up to its usual volume. “Were those your ancestors that were enslaved?”

John shook his head.

“My ancestors were from Serbia, Albania, Hungary, such like that. Mary’s folks were from France and England.”

_That explains why her surname was Lloyd. His must have been Americanized._

Dick cleared his throat.

“So ‘cause of that, Mom — _Dya_ — speaks a different dialect than Dad does.” He lifted his bowl and drained the last of his soup. “She’s kind of mixed, anyway. Not all Roma. Pretty much everything in one.”

“My _řomani_ _čhib_ isn’t the best because of that,” Mary agreed. Her voice had become gentle again, and Damian knew he was forgiven. “That, and my parents couldn’t speak it for shit. Look, Fida. You didn’t know. It doesn’t make it right, but as long as you never do it again...”

“Yes, yes, I understand.” He cleared his throat, willing his face not to flush.

She kept looking at him.

“Ah. Alright. I...I...” The words stuck in his throat. “I...I am...damn it, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say that too often?” Dick asked slyly.

“Shut up.”

“Now _that_ I bet you say all the time.”

Damian cursed under his breath in Arabic while Dick giggled.

“You have parsley on your nose, runt,” he grumbled.

“You’re gonna get frown wrinkles before you’re fifteen, grumpy,” Dick retorted.

Damian ignored him.

“So, you’re mixed?” he asked Mary. “I am as well.”

She finally relaxed again, nodding.

“My family had pretty much fully integrated into normal American society,” she explained. “Whereas John’s refused to.”

“My great-grandparents were the immigrants, and they were determined to live good Romani lives, even in the New World. But my grandfather Wilhelm, the first of my family born in America, joined the circus pretty much as soon as he saw it come into town,” John agreed, chuckling. He swiped his bread once more around the bowl. “Haly’s had only been running for twenty years or so, Wilhelm was sixteen, and he scandalized the hell out of his parents. They had him all set to marry a nice _romni_ whose family had immigrated with theirs, a good friend of his. He didn’t want to settle down, but he didn’t want to leave her, so what did my granddad do? He eloped with her, and they both joined the circus. God almighty, were her parents mad at him and his. They thought she was too shy and obedient to drop a soup spoon during dinner, let alone run with something so _marime_ as a circus.”

Damian couldn’t stay. He didn’t want to stay, let alone listen to a ghost tell stories about more long-gone family members.

“Dad’s grandma Amélia was fifteen at the time,” Dick chirped. “She loved the freedom of the circus as much as great-grandpa Wilhelm did, but it wasn’t as easy for her to learn acrobatics — he got it pretty much immediately, but she had to work at it. Dad, tell Fida how determined she was.”

“She stayed up on the wires almost constantly, up to even while she was pregnant with my dad. She even got back into shape after he was born by doing strength and flexibility exercises with her baby strapped to her chest. Keep in mind she was only nineteen when he was born. Granddad was a natural athlete, but Grandma was quite something herself.”

“And so your dad went up on the wires to join his parents...” Dick prompted.

“When he was only five, yes. Graham, my dad, was an even better athlete than Wilhelm, and when he was older, he was the reason the Flying Graysons became the star attraction that we are, if I do say so myself. Anyway, then he married my _dya_ Elira, another runaway _romni_ , she joined the show, they had me and my brother, we grew up and did the same.”

Damian exhaled hard.

“It seems to me that the men in your family have formed a habit of enticing women into throwing off their inhibitions and marrying them.”

Dick spluttered and choked on his bread while Mary exclaimed, “‘Enticing’? I went into this life of my own free will, thank you very much. I fell in love with the risk, with flying, way before I fell in love with this guy here.”

“Good to know, darling.”

“Sounds like someone I know,” Damian murmured, thinking of a different woman who’d fallen in love with risk and flying long before she’d fallen in love with a Grayson.

The Grayson in question finally stopped choking and wiped drool and bread crumbs off his chin.

“What about you, Fida? What’s your family like?”

Damian’s shoulders tightened.

“I don’t have...my parents don’t live together. My mother and grandfather...”

“Yes?”

He shook his head, then thumped down his dishes.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said roughly.

“Fida —” John started to say.

“No. This is a waste of time. I must be going to Washington, not stuck in this tropical hellhole and this rickety trailer.”

Dick looked upset as Damian got to his feet, picking up the bag that had his uniform, utility belt, and money it it; he opened his mouth to say something.

“Save it, Richard. There’s nothing you can say to convince me to stay and do what you want. Good-bye.”

He was all the way to the door when Mary spoke.

“Washington D.C.? That’s where you want to go?”

“Obviously.” He reached for the handle.

“What if I told you we can get you there?”

He froze.

Mary kept talking.

“We leave our winter grounds in two days to start traveling around the country. Our first leg takes us up along the East Coast, and one of our stops will be in D.C. If you stay with us, you have guaranteed transportation, and you’ll be there by the start of April.”

“Mary, what about his parents?” John asked.

“For one reason or another, he doesn’t live with his parents,” she told her husband. Then to Damian: “Look, I see that you’re determined to not be with your family. If you stay on your own, try to travel on your own, either you’ll end up on the streets, or Child Services will snap you up and you’ll be shoved right into the foster system.”

The timeline still seemed impossibly fragile. These ghosts made his skin crawl, their genuine happiness was agony to him.

But he could see her logic.

“And if you come with us, we might not be able to give you much, but you’ll have the dignity of having a roof over your head, three meals a day, and companionship, on top of free transportation to D.C.”

He said nothing. She huffed.

“What do you think the likelihood of getting there by yourself really is? Let us help you, Fida.”

“I don’t need your help.” He still wouldn’t look at her. “I don’t need anyone’s help.”

“Maybe you don’t think so. But you’re a child, and —”

“I am not a child!”

“By every definition, you _are_ a child.” John started to say something, but Mary shushed him. “I believe in your competency. But you are a child, and you do not have any legal power. People will try to take advantage of you, and they will make decisions for you. Stay with us. We can help you.” She paused. “But ultimately —”

“It’s your choice, Fida,” Dick said, startling everybody. Despite his young voice, he suddenly, shockingly reminded Damian of his adult self. The assurance that he, like his mother now, would have. “But please. You can be kind of a pain in the butt, but we wanna help you. I know you don’t want your family, but we want you. Please.”

Damian was silent, their words churning inside him like rocks in a blender.

“You don’t have to decide right this second,” John spoke up. “Why don’t you walk around a bit? Dick, why don’t you go with him, show him around? And don’t run off this time.”

“Sure thing, Dad.”

Dick leapt from the table and darted over to the door, tentatively putting his hand on Damian’s shoulder, making him stiffen.

“C’mon, Fida. If you’re gonna stay, you gotta know where everything is. If you dump us, you should at least see everything first.” The last sentence sounded slightly strained, like he was trying to cover his fear of the latter happening. “‘Sides, you haven’t even met the animals yet.”

Damian felt Dick taking his hand and opening the door almost before he could reply.

“You circus people had better not be abusing them.”

“Nah, we don’t do that here.”

He managed to turn his head once more before disappearing back into the bright sun, and caught a hopeful look shared between the two elder Graysons. Like they wanted him to stay. Like they wanted him.

 

* * *

 

As it turned out, Zitka was only one of five Indian elephants. 

But Dick still ran and hugged her first.

“Hi girl!” he enthused, wrapping his arms around her thick leg. “Did ya miss me? Did ya miss me?”

“You couldn’t have been gone long enough for her to miss you,” Damian scoffed, but even as he said it, he couldn’t stop watching Zitka reach down and gently wrap her trunk around Dick’s waist. She absolutely dwarfed the skinny little kid, she could’ve squashed him or strangled him with no effort at all, but she still let him bury his face in her wrinkled leg, blinking down at him almost affectionately.

Damian privately scolded himself for anthropomorphizing an animal.

No sooner had he that the other elephants meandered out to the end of their tethers, reaching out inquisitively with their trunks.

“Oh yeah!” Dick pulled his face off. “Fida, meet the rest of the bulls. The biggest one there is Elinore, she’s sort of the boss of the herd. The clumpy girl with the huge feet is Willadeene. The one with the smaller ears, who thinks she’s a delicate little lady, that’s Georgia. And the baby is Clementine, she’s Elinore’s daughter.”

Clementine, who only came up to Dick’s shoulder, sneezed suddenly, scaring herself enough to dart back to her mother’s side.

“Why do you call them bulls if they’re all female?”

“We call all elephants bulls, the boys and the girls.” Dick petted Zitka’s side some more. “Best get used to it, we’re not gonna change our carny talk even for a rube like you.” His voice was teasing.

Damian rolled his eyes and turned his back on Dick, which brought him face-to-face with the other elephants. Willadeene had the audacity to reach out and touch his face; he had to pull her trunk off him. Georgia poked him in the back, examining his shirt, and he moved away from her, almost stumbling right into Elinore’s face.

She made a gentle huffing noise, then reached back and tapped her calf on the head. Clementine emerged from around her mother’s leg, shuffling over to where Damian stood. She slowly extended her thin trunk, putting it in his hand almost like she was shaking it, trembling slightly.

It would not do to startle the baby and potentially anger the mother. So Damian stretched out his other hand and stroked over the small elephant’s head. She calmed down as he kept petting her, tentatively pushing her head up into his palm. With his other hand, he slowly let go of her trunk and petted over her ear, feeling the thick skin ripple slightly.

 _How could anyone want to kill such a creature for something like money or even prestige?_  he found himself wondering. _Grandfather was right. Common people are such savages._

Then he remembered that even with his cause, his grandfather often ignored animals, only paying attention when their species was threatened or when they could be useful to him in some way, never to admire them. That...seemed wrong too. It was odd to think that anyone could ignore them as Clementine steadily grew braver, lightly head-butting his hand and occasionally letting out a tiny trumpet.

“Hey, she likes you.” Dick was delighted. “Man. Just wait till you see the cats.”

As it turned out, while the elephants were tethered just outside the tents, the lion pride had the whole expanse of a sandy ring. The walls around it were — in theory — too tall for the lions to jump over, but not too tall for two boys to stack up several boxes of horse feed and peer over.

Damian had seen lions previously, ripping apart and devouring his family’s enemies, nearly as vicious as his grandfather’s prize tigers. The great maned beast stretched out beneath them did not fool him with his sleepiness; he knew that lions slept twenty hours a day because in the wild, they were very, very efficient predators.

“That big guy’s Jefferson,” Dick narrated, indicating the sleeping male lion. “King of the Serengeti and all that. Those two lying next to him are his wives, Maeve and Vanessa.”

The two lionesses were just as sleepy as their mate, and they each had three fuzzy cubs snuggled up against their sides. Maeve had rolled onto her back while Vanessa was sprawled out on her side. Damian remained wary, but the lionesses were clearly not about to hunt any time soon.

Then he saw the third one.

“And that one’s Lorelei. She was our first girl lion, and Noor calls her Jefferson’s chief wife. If he’s the king, she’s the queen.”

Damian did not doubt it. Lorelei was wide awake, striding over to the boundary, her powerful shoulders rolling under her golden fur, her eyes the color of summer sunlight in late afternoon. She turned her gaze up towards the two boys, her tail slowly sweeping back and forth.

“Why is she not growling at us or trying to attack us?”

“Lions don’t mind company so much. Just don’t stick your hand in.”

“How stupid do you think I am?”

“About as stupid as you look.”

“Runt.”

“Turd.”

“I see you boys are getting along splendidly,” came a female voice from behind them.

Damian turned to see Noor, the Arab New Yorker from earlier, with her whip looped at her belt Indiana Jones-style and a baby in a sling around her chest. The baby looked some months old, with a head of thick dark hair and curious brown eyes — Damian recoiled from it at once. Behind her were two slender women in their late twenties, one in all-black linen, and one in all-white. The one in all-black had very dark brown skin, liquid black eyes, and sleek black hair down to her waist. The one in all-white was fair-skinned, light hazel eyes, and a cloud of tight pale-blonde curls.

“Hi, Noor. Hi, Hazel. Hi, Willow,” Dick chirped to the women. Then, “Hi, Malika,” he cooed at the baby, who gurgled happily at him.

“Don’t try to steal my baby, kid,” Noor said, not without affection, as Dick kissed Malika’s fat cheeks. “Hey there, Fida. You haven’t met the Windsor sisters yet, have you? Well, these are our equestrians, Hazel and Willow Windsor.”

Damian stared at them.

“Absolutely not. There’s no way you’re related.”

“We get that a lot,” laughed the one in white, Willow. Her voice had a slight drawl to it. “But yeah, she’s my little sister. It’s more apparent when you get us on a horse. It’s the skills that run in the family.”

The one in black, Hazel, smiled quietly and nodded.

“We market ourselves as The Yin/Yang Sisters,” she said, her voice quiet, though she had the same drawl as her sister. She then chuckled a bit. “A little on the nose...but that’s Willow for you.”

Willow playfully elbowed at her sister, which Hazel neatly sidestepped.

“Those are our horses over there.” Willow indicated the herd of eight that was grazing near the train. Damian noticed that four of them were black, and four of them were white, and did his best not to roll his eyes. “Noor’s husband told us to get Arabians and we took him at his word.”

Noor did roll her eyes, though not without affection.

“The white ones are mine,” Willow continued, “Earle, Tandy, Rondo, and Stella. The black ones are Hazel’s: Albion, Charlene, Montgomery, and Heloise.”

“Those are truly names fit for a circus.”

Dick fell off his boxes.

“Hey, we’re from Mississippi, what did you expect?” Hazel asked gently, though with no affront in her tone, while her older sister laughed uproariously at Damian’s visceral disgust. “We’ve known two people named Dolly, at least five named Bobby Earle, one named Mayella, another named Annie Flo, our friend’s name is Eudora Jean, and her daughters’ names are Sally-Anne and Sally-May. Our horses got off easy.”

“Tt. Americans.”

“If it helps, our mama’s name is Cherry,” she finished, smiling, while Willow wiped at her eyes and Dick had to haul himself up off the grass. “Coulda been worse for our family.”

“Yeah, but her maiden name was Chevalier, so who knows what her parents were thinking, naming their daughter Cherry Chevalier.” Noor hauled Dick up off the grass, then plucked the baby out of the sling, handing her to him. “Dick, it’s time to feed the tigers. You and Fida wanna come with?”

“Always!”

The Windsor sisters headed back over to their horses, waving a quick goodbye, Hazel’s silky hair trailing behind her like a scarf.

“Cherry was the white one.” Noor answered Damian’s unspoken question. “The Chevaliers got rich off cotton and started a stud farm on the side; the sisters’ dad, Glenn Windsor, was a jockey.” She smirked. “Old Big Daddy Chevalier pitched a fit when she got pregnant with Willow, but she railed back at him about how much she loved Glenn from sunup to sundown and refused to give up the baby, so he had no choice but to let them get married. Pitched another one when the girls joined the circus, but since they’re his only heirs, he can’t exactly disinherit them. Must make family reunions at the Belle Maison plantation fun.”

“I consider myself rather an expert on mixed children with a rich white parent when each half the family each hates the other, and I can assure you, their family reunions are definitely not fun.”

Noor gave him an askance look after he said that.

“C’mon,” she said after a few moments. “Come see the tigers.”

Lorelei’s yellow eyes seemed to follow him as he moved down and headed to the next enclosure, but she had seemed otherwise unperturbed. Even as he was lost in thought, Damian thought himself prepared for the tigers.

That is, until the beast’s claws raked their way down the side of the boundary.

This time, it was Damian that nearly fell off his perch. Dick barely batted an eye; Malika only grumbled slightly in his arms. As Noor opened a nearby bag that reeked of fresh meat, the tiger with its claw marks on the walls snarled up at them.

“They’re not exactly as friendly as the lions,” Dick said helpfully.

The tiger on the other side of the enclosure was lean; it glared balefully over at them, but didn’t move. The one lashing its tail beneath them was rather fat, belly hanging low to the ground, scoring its claws against the boundary if they dared lean too far.

“Special delivery, courtesy of the Coconut Grove butcher.” Noor emptied the bag over the side, splattering the sand with blood and gristle. The tigers both fell upon the meat, yellow fangs ripping it apart.

Damian clapped his hands over his nose, feeling his stomach recoil. It reminded him too much of the wild cats his grandfather kept to punish traitors and enemies. He had once made the mistake of getting too close while it had been happening when he was six, close enough to hear the traitors’ whimpered pleas for mercy while they were being devoured alive. He had hardened his heart to their fate, but still, that fate was truly a horrific one.

Of course, the cats eating them had been Ra’s’ prize tigers.

“What in the name of God are they —?”

“Alligator and wild pig.” Noor sounded far too cheerful about that. “Florida hunters will shoot and eat _anything_ , which the butcher knows, and since it’s not typical meat, I get it half-price. Not bad, considering I’m living on a cat-tamer salary.”

Dick still looked unbothered.

“Kipling’s letting her have first pick again,” he observed, wiggling his fingers in front of Malika’s face.

“Of course he is, he’s a good husband.”

Damian gave them odd looks.

“Tigers don’t mate for life.”

“Not usually, no. Ours are a special case. They can’t stand to be apart; we tried to sell Kipling once, but as soon as we took him away, his wife roared at us for hours until we canceled the sale. God almighty, were Ringling mad.”

Kipling, the obliging male, turned out to be the slimmer, more temperate beast. He gave them another glare as he finally got his turn at the good cuts, soaking his muzzle in blood. The female, the fatter one, had her face absolutely buried in the meat, her yellow-ochre fur saturated with red.

“He’s not very smart if he’s letting her have the good parts first,” Damian scoffed. “Tt. Reminds me of Gr — reminds me of a man I know, and his bossy girlfriend.”

Noor laughed.

“Kipling _is_ kinda pussy-whipped, if you’ll pardon the pun, _and_ the hypocrisy. But he’s got good reason to let her eat first, seeing as she’s in kind of a delicate condition and all.”

“A delicate —?” Damian looked at the tigress again, at how her belly hung low to the ground. “Oh. Oh.”

“The cubs are due right around my birthday,” Dick said happily. “Baby tigers. That’s gonna be the best birthday present ever.”

Damian considered the tigress, the expectant mother. Her brindled pelt, her jaw dripping blood, her long fangs like daggers, her baleful golden eyes.

“What’s her name?”

“Kali.”

“Figures.”

Kali snarled at them, lashing her paw, which was like watching a prizefighter swinging a chainsaw. She was truly like her namesake, the Hindu goddess of death and destruction. His grandfather would approve of her ferocity.

“Hey, Fida?” Dick said suddenly. “You’ve seen _Mary_ _Poppins_ , right?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” He stopped himself in time from saying _I watched it with you._

“Well, it’s too bad Mary Poppins herself isn’t here. She’d say that our cats are super‐ _Kali_ ‐fragilistic-expialidocious. Eh? Eh?”

Damian fantasized about pushing him over the edge and letting the tigers eat him.

“I thank God Halim isn’t here to hear that, he would’ve laughed like the maniac he is,” Noor said fondly, taking Malika back. The baby cooed happily to be back with her mother. “Save the attention-begging for the rubes in Tallahassee and Jacksonville, Dickie.”

“I gotta wait two whole days for Tallahassee and three for Jacksonville, Noor, give me a break.”

“Give _me_ a break from all your puns, kid.” She poked him in the cheek, making him giggle. “I get enough of that at home.” Malika made gurgling baby noises as she snuggled back into her sling. “Speaking of which, I gotta go home, it’ll be time to pray again soon.”

“Say hi to God for me.”

She laughed as she walked away, making Damian realize that that seemed to be the standard reaction to Dick around here, even when he was being irritating. He was reminded of adult Dick’s conversations and meetings with his old teammates, including the quiet Atlantean and the slutty one-armed archer and the annoying speedster and the deceptively powerful sparkly Amazon. Even during serious times, even when Damian personally thought it was a waste of time, he almost always managed to make them smile, to make them feel a little more determined and hopeful.

Dick turned around and leaned against the back of the boundary, bracing his hands on the edge, humming to himself. His black curls drifted a bit on an early-spring breeze.

“Why do you like me?”

The words fell out before he could stop them.

Dick looked at him, tilting his head to the side.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, why do you like me. Why do you want me to stay. We’ve been nothing but bothersome to each other, and how do you possibly intend to share that tiny trailer with one more person? My presence is normally very enriching, but I have nothing to offer a pack of circus freaks. Your mother’s suggestion would be nothing but an inconvenience to both our parties.”

The younger boy was quiet for almost a solid minute. Below them, the tigers finally finished eating, licking their paws thoroughly clean and moving to the other side of the enclosure, curling up against each other.

“C’mere.”

“What?” Damian demanded.

“Just c’mere.”

Dick pulled him down from the boxes, then led him around to the striped back of the big top. He crouched down next to one of the pegs that held the tent’s rope, and Damian, still confused, followed.

Dick then indicated one of the people milling around, a grotesquely fat blonde woman in a crop top, tattoos of what appeared to be the continents of Africa and Asia wrapping around her left side, the countries’ borders almost warped by the expanse of her flesh.

“Nora McKinley. We call her the ‘Living Globe.’ She’s got tattoos of the whole world round her middle, see? Heard our doctor talking to her, apparently she’s got a thyroid problem. She only watches musicals, sometimes talks to her dead mom, and has a pet Siamese fighting fish named Tuptim.”

“So she’s a lunatic. What’s your point?”

Dick was undeterred.

“Those guys there are Ned and Ted O’Leary. They’ve been literally joined at the hip since before they were born. Their dad wanted them to get surgery to separate them, but they came here before he could do anything about it. Our knife thrower there is Alejandro Jose Rivera, he had to leave Guatemala ‘cause of the civil war, he and his best friend live together, and he’s still got real bad memories of stuff that happened in his home. The pretty lady in pink tights is Rose Lovelace, she’s an aerialist; she’s from South Carolina and her parents kicked her out when she was sixteen and she was homeless for four years before we found her. There’s Kiran Patel, our magician, he reads romance novels, he and his wife Sita worship Lord Vishnu and Lady Lakshmi together, and I have no idea where their triplet kids came from, because my mom knows for a fact that Sita was never pregnant.

Samson Jones, our strongman; he was raised by his dad, he loves _Lord of the Rings_  and old jazz, and some days he’s so sad, he actually can’t get out of bed. Alice Johnson, we call her ‘Lady Beardsley,’ ‘cause, well, she’s got a beard. She also plays three different instruments and sews her own clothes and smokes marijuana a lot ‘cause she gets scared of almost everything and needs to relax. Shanti Singh, she’s a snake dancer who has a python named Chamelee, she worships Lord Shiva, and she’s been sick for years ‘cause she used to do drugs, and she taught me to play cricket, but I still don’t really understand it.”

Dick finally paused for breath. Damian stared at the oddballs, who now had some backstory attached to them, and felt more steamrollered, but no less confused.

“Why did you tell me all that?”

Dick finally looked squarely at him.

“‘Cause you’re weird, Fida. You’re one seriously weird kid. You fight like a ninja and you talk like an old man and you’ve obviously got some stuff going on with your family.”

He put his hand on Damian’s shoulder; Damian was so shocked that he almost suplexed the brat.

“But you can see that I’m used to weird, living here. Weird people are good, Fida. And since you are, I think you’re good too. ‘Cause even if they’re not weird the same way you are, they’re gonna understand a lot. And even if you think they won’t be there, even if you think they hate you or you hate them, at the end of the day they’re still gonna have your back.”

Dick smiled, and even if that face would gain experience and cares and exhaustion, Damian could still swear he saw that smile echoing down through seventeen years.

“We’re like a family in that way, I guess.”

Damian said nothing. For a long time, all he did was just look at him.

The gentle air smelled like new leaves. Nearby, one of the elephants trumpeted.

 

* * *

 

He refused to let John and Mary look in or even touch his plastic shopping bag.

“It’s alright, kiddo, we won’t hurt your stuff. We just want you to have some space in your bed for you.”

The bed in question was a camp bed loaned to the Graysons, pushed up against the far wall of Dick’s already-too-small room. All there was was a chest of drawers, a child-sized bed with blue sheets and a worn plush elephant on it, and two posters, one predictably of Superman, and one that gave him whiplash when he realized it was the same Flying Graysons poster that Dick now kept on the wall of his home. With Damian in addition, the room was barely more than a closet, and there was certainly no spare space on the camp bed.

But he still held his bag to his chest and glowered.

“I already agreed to come with you circus freaks. Don’t push it.”

“Hey, watch the insults,” John warned. “You can always just stay in a sleeping bag, you know.”

Damian glowered harder. John turned to his son, who was now completely content, practically bouncing in place in the doorway, beaming hard enough to split his face.

“Don’t mind having a roommate, _čhavo_?”

“I’m good, _Dat_. I’m really all good.”

John nodded, then bent down to kiss his son’s forehead.

“Want me to push you on the swing?”

“Yeah!”

John wrapped his strong arm around Dick’s slight shoulders, and his son snuggled up to him.

“Fida, you’re welcome to swing too,” John offered.

“I do not swing.”

“You’ll like it.”

“Absolutely not.”

John got an odd look in his eyes before, and Damian set down his bag, going to the window. For a brief moment, he thought he heard John speaking in a low voice, with an even softer reply, which he ignored.

At the end of the field, the “swing” turned out to be a long, thick rope that had been tied to the branch of a magnolia tree, a fat, strong knot resting at the bottom of the rope. When he got there, after running the whole way, Dick clambered up like a monkey, clutching the rope and resting his feet on the knot; his father pulled the rope back all the way and soon Dick was swinging, back and forth and nearly high enough to loop over the branch. His father pushed him every so often to keep up the speed and height, and Dick’s whoops of joy could be heard even from the inside of the trailer.

Damian found himself wondering if his father had ever played with Dick Grayson. He remembered laughing scornfully when they didn’t have to work and Dick offered to take him to the movies, a ball game, the park, a concert, the boardwalk. He would watch from the training room while Dick left with Barbara or Stephanie, or watch the women use the tickets to take their friends, and feel superior. He’d only watched films or shows under heavy duress, usually while he was tired or wounded and had no say in whether or not his companions put on the TV. He’d called Barbara unprofessional behind her back for going out with her friends when she should be putting herself to what work she could still do (Dick had given him an earful), and mocked Stephanie when she’d refused to patrol through her menstrual bleeding and instead napped on the manor couch binging sitcoms, called her weak and womanly and an untrained novice (she’d nailed him in the forehead with her hot water bottle and Alfred had had to pry them apart).

He wondered now if Stephanie had played alone as a child, running around with a Halloween-store cape pretending to be a superhero even then, if Barbara had been a commanding little princess drinking pretend tea with her father, discussing whether or not it was worth taxing the residents of the Enchanted Forest further in order to go to war with the evil wizards.

Dick had known how to be a child, at least, as much as he somehow knew to accept people Damian didn’t understand how he could accept.

“Fida?”

He turned to see Mary standing in the tiny room’s doorway. Her black hair was now hanging loose, curling around her neck and shoulders like climbing ivy.

“Why don’t you come outside for a while?”

“Why should I?”

“Well.” She smiled a little wryly. “You don’t have to play. But if you’re going to stay with us, you might as well be involved in what we do. And while you’ve got a chance to be happy in between the hard stuff, you might as well take it. C’mon.”

“Well, if you’re just going to bother me until I do...”

He didn’t take her outstretched hand, and he still absolutely refused to play. But he did follow her out of the empty trailer, picking up a book at random from one of the piles.

When they reached the magnolia tree, Dick spotted his mother and on his next swing, leapt with the momentum of the rope —

— landing squarely in Mary’s arms, making all three Graysons laugh.

Damian’s pulse rang in his ears; he sat down in the grass and opened up the book to a random page, realizing that it was _Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland._

_“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” said Alice._

_“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the cat. “We’re all mad here.”_

At the same time, he remembered Dick’s words from earlier.

_But you can see that I’m used to weird, living here. Weird people are good, Fida. And since you are, I think you’re good too._

“He’s all mad too,” Damian muttered to himself.

Dick clambered back onto the swing, already beginning his flight between the safety of his parents’ arms, their faces full of love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> řomani čhib — the Romani language  
> gadje — non-Roma (plural, gadjo is singular)  
> romni — Romani woman or girl  
> marime — unclean  
> čhavo — son, boy


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I’m finally in my twenties, as of the 2nd. Wish me luck, everyone.

“Pack it up!” roared the voice through the megaphone, echoing through the camp. “The train leaves for Tallahassee in one hour, and it waits for no man, woman, kid, or animal!”

The sun had not yet fully risen, and the dark blue sky was steadily being suffused with lacy pink and cottony yellow. Already, the tents had been taken down, but the roustabouts were still busy, packing up the cars and helping the circus folk hitch their trailers to the back of the train. Noor was double-checking to make sure that the lions’ and tigers’ enclosures were locked, while the Windsor sisters soothed the nervous horses. Shanti had Chamelee back in her tank, sitting on the edge of the train car and running her hand over the top while the python regularly flicked her tongue. Two teenage girls who Damian had learned were the doctor’s daughters were rounding up the little kids; the older redhead carried the veterinarian’s son Colin on her back while the younger blonde was calming down the hyperactive Patel triplets. Alice the bearded lady, apparently all packed up already, calmly sat in the grass and smoked a joint no-handedly, plucking out Kylie Minogue on her mandolin, the Polynesian tattoos on her arms rippling slightly in time with the song.

The doctor’s wife, in the meantime, fussed over literally everyone.

“Mary,” she said, cupping the younger woman’s cheeks, “You are looking weary. Have you had anything to eat yet?”

“Nobody but the kids have had anything to eat, Effie, it’s six in the morning,” Mary replied gently, taking the hands off her face.

Effie, who was stout and short and, despite being in her forties, very blonde, scoffed at that answer.

“Everyone in my family has already had something to eat.” She turned towards the teenage girls and shouted: “Athena! Aphrodite! That is not how you calm down children! They’re miserable!”

Damian, upon hearing the names, snickered loudly.

“They’re _fine_ , Mom,” yelled back the older girl, whose name was apparently Athena. Her auburn hair was cut short; she wore a maroon Harvard t-shirt and cutoff jeans and wire-rimmed glasses. She was also right about Colin Liu being fine; he snuggled his face sleepily into the crook of her shoulder, clearly trying to make up for being woken before dawn. “If you’d quit shouting, they’d be even more fine.”

Aphrodite, the younger girl, didn’t even bother answering, she was too busy bribing Sunil, Rahul, and Lakshman Patel with cookies she’d evidently smuggled out of her family’s trailer. She was as blonde as her mother, with a deep Mediterranean tan and eyes as blue as Mary’s, wearing a rose-pink dress and clinking faux-gold bangles. Her nails looked like they’d been carved out of pearl.

“They are not fine! You are as clumsy with children as an old unmarried crone! You may never —”

“I’m _sixteen_! Stop worrying about whether I’m gonna get married!”

“I will never stop!”

Damian had no interest in such feminine matters. He’d swiped the entire set of throwing knives from Alejandro Rivera the knife-thrower and was currently engrossed with them.

“Hmm.” He held one up to the dim morning light. “Mined and forged in Brazil, I would wager. Excellent condition. Polished and sharpened regularly...yes, I can see how one could create and keep a career with such blades.”

He whipped it out towards one of the open cars; it embedded itself hilt-deep in one of the costume trunks.

“Acceptable.”

In the meantime, Mary and Effie had been joined by two more women in their mid-thirties. The first was Sita Patel, the magician’s wife and the mother of the triplets. She wore a knee-length red cotton skirt and a white blouse patterned with red flowers, her black hair tied up in a messy bun. Her jaw was square, her nose hawkish, so that she looked more regal than typically female-beautiful. The second woman was the veterinarian, Amy Liu, who had on purple shorts, a yellow tank top, and wore turquoise-rimmed glasses along with chunky turquoise jewelry. Her lipstick was hot pink, and her dark eyes sparked with intelligence; her son waved sleepily at her as she sat down next to Mary.

“Coffee, Grayson?” she said brightly, offering a full Superman mug to her friend.

Mary laughed.

“Like I don’t have enough Superman stuff at home thanks to Dick.” She accepted the coffee, taking a deep draught. “You got one for Sita too, Liu? She looks tired.”

“I _am_ tired.” Sita’s voice was low and unusually deep; she ran a hand through her hair, unraveling her bun. “Kiran was up half the night practicing for the show this evening, and when I finally got to sleep Rahul woke me and both his brothers up an hour later because he thought there was a monster under their bed.”

Amy solemnly handed her two full mugs. Sita drank deeply from the first and was nearly done by the time Effie got her hands on even one.

“And Lakshman has a cold now,” she finished. “I have to quarantine him from his brothers, make him sleep in a sleeping bag instead of in their bed, and I have to keep him away from Shanti so she doesn’t get sick.”

“That’s going to be hard,” Mary said quietly. “He spends half his time in her trailer playing with the snake and listening to her stories. He and his brothers call her _Maasii_ , you know.”

“I keep trying to tell them that she’s not _actually_ my sister,” Sita said with a combination of affection and ruefulness.

Effie shuddered at the mention of the snake.

“I see why your people traditionally don’t like snakes, Mary. ‘Unclean’ is the right word for reptiles. I can’t for the life of me see why you don’t mind them.”

“My people also traditionally don’t like mixing with _gadje_ unless they have to, so I might as well break the rules all the way, unless you _want_ me to abolish our talks.”

Effie looked slightly embarrassed, but Sita smiled and Amy laughed.

Damian threw another knife, which embedded itself right next to its predecessor.

“Your parents were the farthest thing from traditional,” Amy teased her friend, poking Mary in the shoulder. “Your parents were so damn integrated into that new modern all-American normal, when you ran away your dad had an office job and your mom had a perm; she could’ve passed for a white lady with a tan.”

“Whereas you are the way you are because your parents _aren’t_ normal.” Mary took another drink from her Superman mug. “How are they, by the way?”

“Oh, they’re great. Mom’s just got a new group of dancers lined up for the next burlesque show she’s planning, and Dad just finished learning how to make the perfect crème brûlée so now he’s taken up basketball and knitting. He made Lisa a scarf and now Mom’s begging her to wear it into court at least once.”

“I love that your sister the attorney is the weird one in your family,” Sita deadpanned in her low, throaty voice.

“The one who can’t even fix microwave meals? She _is_ weird,” Effie agreed. “Someone should set her right, but in the meantime, your mother is right to be concerned.”

Amy shrugged, not losing one ounce of her sense of cheer.

“About Lisa having a good career? I mean, she can’t cook, sure, but Mom’s worrying is kinda —”

“Oh, I wouldn’t read too much into it.” Mary finally set aside her coffee cup. “It’s a mother’s job to worry, even a none-too-conventional mother.”

Damian took aim one more time, and that was when the gleam of the steel finally caught the women’s attention.

“What is that little boy _doing_?” Effie yelped. Her daughters looked over, mildly curious; the triplets and the younger Liu all craned their necks around.

Damian gritted his teeth at being called “little boy.”

“I’m working,” he said stiffly. “Which you all seem to be unfamiliar with.”

The women all switched from shocked to indignant.

“Sitting around gossiping about feminine matters while the circus is leaving in fifty-four minutes...useless.”

“Excuse us for having friends.” Sita didn’t raise her voice, but her eyes flashed. Her triplets flinched instinctively. “And you should apologize for being so rude to your elders, and for, I suspect, taking Alejandro’s knives.”

“Oh, did I hurt your feelings?” he asked acidly. “Forget it, woman. You have no jurisdiction over me.”

“ _She_ may not.” Mary rose to her feet. “But you’re living with _me_ and _my_ family. And if you won’t apologize, _I_ have reason to punish you.”

“You have none —”

“Liu. Think you could use an apprentice for the morning?”

Amy’s flat eyebrows shot up over the rims of her glasses.

“I could always use an apprentice. Colin’s still too little, and in the meantime I gotta indoctrinate _someone_ into the life.”

“You will _not_ you harpy, I _refuse_ to do the work of _hired_ _help_ —”

 

* * *

 

An hour and six minutes later, the train was chugging its slow path towards Tallahassee, and Damian was stuck with Amy Liu in the horse car. She’d taken off her jewelry and swapped her shorts out for work jeans, and she very carefully traced up Heloise’s fetlock, going over the mare’s hoof to ensure that nothing had knocked her shoe loose or gotten stuck in the soft part of her foot. Damian, for his part, was checking over Earle, examining to make sure that he showed no signs of colic, eye infections, or strained muscles.

Though Earle and the other male horses were all geldings, their graceful build, pure coloring, and obvious good breeding was as impressive on them as on any stallion. Their eyes shone with good humor, and the mares walked as daintily as princesses.

Some of Damian’s anger at being relegated to such undignified work was tempered by the presence of such creatures; his work seemed to fall in time with the rhythmic huff of their breathing.

“Take your time,” Amy advised. “We want to be thorough. If we don’t, the Windsors will fuss over them for God knows how long. Heh, Willow and Hazel think these horses are their babies; they’d spoil ‘em rotten if I didn’t keep reminding them to knock it off.”

Damian eventually finished with Earle and moved on to Charlene. She pressed her soft black muzzle into his hands, nickering, clearly hoping for a snack.

“Demanding beast,” he muttered, stroking his hand carefully over her long neck. “You’d eat all day long if you could. The fact that you must keep in shape for showing means nothing to you.”

“Yeah, they’re just like some of the human performers,” Amy laughed, patting Tandy’s flank. “You’re real good at this, kid. Got a nice steady hand and all.”

“Of course I’m good. And don’t call me ‘kid.’”

“Should’ve known. Colin doesn’t like it when I call him ‘kid’ either.” She turned back to the horses.

“So what’s _your_ story?” he asked her rather mockingly. “How did you come to join this parade of freaks and oddballs, and how will you expect it to make you more human to me?”

Amy refused to rise to his insults. Instead she just looked at him, raising an eyebrow.

“I was born and raised in LA. I’m third generation Korean-American. My mom Jackie runs a theater, and my dad Joey was a househusband, raised me and my older sister Lisa. I’ve got no tragic backstory I’m afraid, but I did grow up with a girl you might know, my best friend Mary Lloyd.”

Damian started.

“Oh yeah. I lived downtown and she lived in the suburbs, but we were in the same tax bracket, so we went to all the same schools, all the way up from kindergarten to high school graduation. Then I went to Berkeley and she went to UCLA, and our third year of college she calls me up and tells me she’s in love with an acrobat and she’s going to run away to the circus, and she asks me if I want to go too. At the time I say no, that I’m dead set on being a vet. Mary gets hitched, has her baby a few years later. I meet my boyfriend my last year of veterinary school, he gets me pregnant, and when I tell him the son of a bitch runs out on me. So as soon as I get my degree I call up Mary and tell her I’m joining her, so we can raise our kids together and so I can see my sister’s face when I tell her I’m going to be in the circus.”

She shrugged.

“And I got hired, had Colin right here in Haly’s, and that’s that.” She patted Tandy’s side. “You got a tragic backstory, Fida?”

“What else was going on with Mary?”

“Not my place to tell. You’re going to have to ask her yourself.”

Damian huffed just like the horses, which made Amy chuckle.

“I don’t have to do anything you say or tell you anything about myself,” he said.

“No, I suppose that you don’t.” She went right back to work, and her refusal to get angry both infuriated and, despite himself, grudgingly impressed him.

“How does a woman become a veterinarian anyway? I would think that your parents would want you to be married by now.”

“Why? I already bore a son. There’s no reason for me to get married anymore.” She peered at him over the turquoise tops of her glasses. “But in all seriousness, my parents know that life has more to offer women than just supporting men. And even if they didn’t, animals and working with them are way more important to me than anyone’s opinions on what I should be doing.”

Damian was still mulling this over when they finished with the horses and moved on to the big cats. Maeve and Vanessa tolerated their checkups without complaint, But Lorelei faced them with a _Don’t_ _try_ _anything_ look, even as she rolled over for her own examination. Awake, Jefferson was far more magnificent-looking, keeping his amber gaze on them the whole time, particularly as they picked up the squeaking cubs to make sure they were healthy.

One of the cubs tugged at the hem of Damian’s shirt with the tiniest of teeth, and he felt an unusual flutter in his heart as she did.

“One of the baby boys will be our next headliner when he grows up and his dad’s too old,” Amy narrated, picking up one of the other cubs. “We’ll buy him a harem of lionesses, and his brothers and all his sisters will be sold to zoos and other circuses.”

“Which of the males do you pick? The biggest? The strongest?”

“The gentlest and the least likely to maul Noor.”

Jefferson let out a long, low breath. The girl cub squeaked.

“I’m thinking this little guy.” Amy opened the mouth of the cub in her hands to examine his pink gums and miniature white teeth. “Franklin. He’s a sweetie. You got his sister there, Wanda; the other boys are Eric and Arnold, the other girls are Trisha and Jeanette. Be gentle, the moms won’t like it if their babies start crying.”

Wanda kept tugging at his shirt, trying to take him down, only managing to pull a little bit. Damian was impressed by her tenacity, though her futile attempts were also very entertaining.

“Why do they not attack me?”

“Because they trust me.” Amy finished examining Franklin. “And as Noor probably told you, lions are social animals. As long as they don’t try to play with me, I’m good, because I’m part of the pride. So you, being with me, are good by extension.”

“‘Good’? Safe from these ferocious beasts?”

Wanda finally lost her grip and tumbled backwards, paws over head, finally coming to a squeaking stop at her mother’s feet. Vanessa picked her up and started giving her a firm bath to wash off the train floor’s dust and complete the embarrassment.

“If that’s how you want to put it, yeah.” Amy looked amused. “But when I go to the tigers, you should stay back. Kali’s been even crabbier than usual since she got pregnant.”

“So I’ve noticed.”

When they walked over, his tentative peace was shattered by Kali’s growls. Amy, cool as ever, looked over Kipling fairly quickly before moving onto the expectant mother. Kali snarled at her caretaker, the snarl becoming a near full-blown roar when Amy touched her swollen belly.

“You’re all right, big girl. Your babies are all right.”

The next roar made the train car rattle and Damian leap back. The lion cubs whimpered in fright, Jefferson growled, and the lionesses snarled and snapped at Kali irritably.

“Sometimes I wish we had the budget to put the different cats in separate cars.” Amy took off her stethoscope, moving back away from the cats.

Damian glowered at the tigers. He had been a fool, to pet the horses, to sit with the lions. These were mere animals, nothing more.

As they headed out to go check on the elephants, the tigers’ eyes watched him go. Kali’s snarls became quieter, as though they were less of a protective scream, more of a statement. It could almost have been mistaken for a human, speaking in a low grumble.

In the meantime, he took a steadying breath and pushed away from the cats and their bright, curious golden eyes.

 

* * *

 

Amy had him done in less than three hours, but there were still two until the train arrived in Tallahassee. Bored, Damian wandered the train a little bit, interrupting the roustabouts’ game of poker, accidentally walking in on the magician’s assistant Soledad reading in her nightgown (she swore at him in Spanish a lot before he finally managed to shut the door), before finally stopping in the dining car for a cup of coffee.

He pondered what Amy had said about Mary, all the details she had left out, but especially about how she had lived a normal life before she had gone to the circus when she was....what, twenty? Normality was for banal people, true, which was what the Lloyds must’ve been. But the circus, of all things? Even if she’d grown to love flying before, love the falling and the rush of adrenaline and near-terror and the roar of blood in one’s ears, she could’ve flown elsewhere, as he knew from experience.

“Love is such a stupid motivator,” he muttered into his coffee cup.

The tall black woman behind the bar who’d made his coffee, with her over-styled hair and heavy makeup, gave him an odd look.

“Pretty jaded for an eleven-year-old,” she said, her voice as raspy as Sita’s. Though it was the middle of the morning, her magenta lipstick complemented her vivid purple dress. “I know what love did to me, but what did it ever do to you?”

“Did I ask for your opinion or your probing questions?” he grumbled in response.

“Alright there, young Mr. Himay.” She started pouring a cup of coffee from the machine for herself.

Damian sipped his own, and was surprised to find that it was very good, hot and strong and not too bitter. It reminded him of the cups his mother liked to drink, prepared expertly by her handmaidens, that he’d used to sneak down to the kitchen and get tastes from.

That was, before his grandfather had caught him stealing from the kitchen and had beaten him for it.

One of Talia’s handmaidens, Mariam, who’d been preparing the coffee that day, who’d used to sneak him sweets when he was a toddler before he’d decided he too old for such frivolity, had had her finger cut off for allowing her vigilance to slip enough to let a child past her guard. She’d cried piteously and so had lost another finger for showing weakness.

But she was lucky she was so favored by Talia, it could’ve easily been her whole hand. She was lucky she hadn’t been caught outwardly defying the Demon’s Head to help Damian, what with her extra food, she could’ve been like another handmaiden, Laila, who’d questioned the excessive harshness of Damian’s training and so had been forced to undergo part of it herself; Laila’d been killed in combat practice, her opponent had sliced off her arm and she’d bled to death right there on the training room floor. Laila’s screams of agony before she died, echoing through the whole base, had also been a factor in Mariam’s stopping giving him treats.

After the beating, Damian had also had to watch as Mariam got her fingers cut off.

He’d been four when he’d heard Laila die for trying to stand up for him. He’d been seven when he and Mariam had both been punished for his wanting a little unnecessary pleasure.

Damian just finished his coffee when his head snapped up, as did the woman behind the bar’s, for the same reason: they heard the voices coming from the other side of the closed door, of two people standing on the narrow precipice between cars.

“Couldn’t you tell me this in our room?” John Grayson sounded puzzled.

“No. I don’t want Dick to know just yet,” Mary replied.

The woman behind the bar clambered out as Damian got up from his table; they both moved over to the door, pressing their ears to it.

“What is it, _miri_ _ćerxai_? Are you okay?”

Mary took a deep breath. Damian pictured her fidgeting with her hair, maybe her hands, her eyelashes fluttering the same way Dick’s did when he was baring his emotions.

“I’m pregnant.”

Damian’s heart snapped free and plummeted.

The woman next to him began to beam with delight.

“‘Bout damn time,” she murmured. “Dickie’s been begging ‘em for a little brother or sister for for-goddamn-ever.”

“You’re pregnant?” John’s voice was little more than a whisper.

A moment’s beat, presumably for his wife to nod her head.

Then John gave a great shout of joy, loud enough that he could’ve been heard in at least two more cars. Though the precipice outside was narrow and shaky, there was a loud creak that sounded like he had jumped up to embrace her.

“I can’t believe this! It’s real, you’re really —”

“Yeah, I went to see Kostos. I’m ten weeks.” Mary’s voice sounded like she was near tears of happiness, wrapped up in her husband’s arms. “It finally worked. We finally did it.”

_Finally?_

But Damian had little time to wonder about the implications of her word choice.

 _He calls Cain his sister and those fools Drake and Todd his brothers,_ he thought, _when all this time he had a chance at a real sister or brother. That lowborn scum Zucco not only stole his parents, but stole his sibling. None of them are his real sibling, the one that died with his mother._

The woman at his side rapped sharply at the door, making the metal platform outside creak again.

“Wanted to tell you congratulations!” she shouted. “Well done, you two.”

“River, you’ve got to stop eavesdropping.” John sounded a combination of amused and embarrassed.

“Well, I guess you were going to find out eventually.” Mary just sounded amused.

Damian looked at his companion.

“Is your given name actually River?”

“No.” The corner of her lipsticked mouth quirked up. “My given name is Jordan.”

“That’s an stupid name for a woman.”

“Yes, I agree.”

“Fida?” Mary’s voice softened. “How were things with Dr. Liu? Did you learn anything?”

“I learned how to give an elephant a bath. It was incredibly undignified,” he grumbled, “dealing with those animals. Taking care of them.” His petulant words disguised the nausea that had been growing since he’d heard that she was pregnant.

“‘Undignified,’ huh? Good, that does sound like a learning experience.” Damian understood that he was forgiven, that she saw he was no longer angry and was giving him another chance. It caused another feeling to go along with the nausea, an odd light feeling in his chest. “So you heard? Dick’s going to have a little brother or sister.”

“Yes, I heard.”

“That calls for a celebration,” River decided, flinging open the door to the dining car. John and Mary did indeed have their arms around each other; he rested his hand atop her curls, stroking, his touch gentle, like the woman he was holding was infinitely beautiful and precious. Her blue eyes glowed with happiness; they walked into the dining car holding hands.

Damian slumped down at his table, intending to avoid them. But he was completely surprised when they sat right across from him, resting their entwined hands atop the table. River’s hands, bringing over the coffee and a bottle of whiskey, by contrast had long, clever fingers with only slight callouses, topped with inch-long magenta nails. Damian’s were as rough as the acrobats from years of harsh training, from years of holding his sword. All eight hands were varying shades of brown, but his were so painfully smaller than even Mary’s.

River uncorked the whiskey and poured a generous helping in John’s coffee, before drinking directly from the bottle for herself. Mary’s and Damian’s remained untouched by the alcohol.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to drink caffeine when you’re pregnant either,” Mary told her friend.

“Are you kidding?” River wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “You can’t believe half the stuff Kostos tells you, you know. He married Effie of all people, gossip queen of Tarpon Springs.”

“He _is_ full of it,” John agreed, chuckling. “If you could create electricity through gossip and thinly-disguised bullying, Kostos and his family could power all of Athens for a year, and still have enough for half of Istanbul.”

“Alright, laugh it up, you two.” Mary passed her coffee to River, who started drinking it and her whiskey alternately. “But don’t come crying to me when Kostos hears you and you have to go to a rube hospital for your next tetanus shot.”

“I’d rather just get the tetanus,” River declared.

“Ah, lockjaw. That’d be the only thing that could get anyone on this train to stop talking,” John said solemnly.

“Yourself included,” Damian retorted, which made River laugh and Mary smirk. John rolled his eyes, pretending to be offended, but was smiling again a moment later.

Damian cleared his throat.

“So. I take it Gr — Richard will be happy?”

“He’s been dying for a sibling,” John said, not losing his smile. “He’d love a little sister, but he’d especially love a little brother. If he had it his way he’d have a little sister _and_ at least three little brothers _and_ _still_ not let up on us.”

_And instead he has none._

“That’s fantastic.” He stared morosely into his coffee. “I couldn’t be more thrilled for your shoddy little family.”

“Be nice, Fida,” John chided, while Mary gave Damian an askance look.

“Fida, if you’re worried about me, don’t be,” she said firmly. “I’ve done this before. I know how to have a baby.”

“I’m not worried. All I want to do is get to Washington D.C.”

River raised a heavily pencilled eyebrow, but for once said nothing.

The Graysons placed their hands on his shoulders, and he shrugged them off, ignoring the way his heart beat faster when they did.

“We know, Fida.”

“We’ll get you to D.C. You can count on that.”

And that was all that mattered, he told himself.

But for some reason, when they reached Tallahassee those hours later, when their tent was set up in a great flurry and the lines of expectant customers stretched far beyond the outer limits of the field, when the show began to start, Damian couldn’t help but linger —

— and watch them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to picture River the way I do, please know that I was heavily inspired by Laverne Cox.
> 
> maasii — aunt, specifically a mother’s younger sister  
> miri ćerxai — my star


	4. Chapter 4

The drums rolled; a single spotlight landed on the lone figure in red, heavy dust hung in the sugar-and-popcorn-scented air, each mote flecking the spotlight like gold in a prospector’s pan.

He was silent at first.

Everyone under the big top held their breath.

Then Jack Haly boomed:

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WELCOME TO THE GREATEST SHOW IN AMERICA: THE C.C. HALY AND NORTON BROTHERS’ NATIONAL TRAVELING CIRCUS!”

More spotlights hit the air, punctuating the darkness, hitting the performers, in their glitter and their bright outfits in every hue, the great shapes of the trumpeting elephants in their scarlet outfits and the roars of the cats and long, vivid streams of flames. Less than a second later, the screaming roar of the crowd’s cheers and applause hit like a cresting wave; Damian shut his eyes, dizzied.

Then he managed to peer around the tent flap again.

Jack Haly was just a fat old man, mid-to-late fifties or so, his formerly black hair and short beard swiftly going gray and white. His crimson jacket with its gold trim was ill-fitting, and his black top hat was severely dated. He should’ve appeared ridiculous to the audience, just as much as the people in multicolored skintight outfits lining up to wave, the animals in fringe and plumes bowing and rearing, a thousand colors all blending together and clashing, like some child’s sugar-induced dream come to life. Damian marveled at that it was not ridiculous to these people, that old Haly commanded their attention with such ease, that they were truly enraptured, when by all accounts they should’ve been laughing at him.

“THESE ARE NO ORDINARY PERFORMERS, FOLKS! YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THEM, AND YOU WILL NEVER SEE ANYTHING LIKE THEM EVER AGAIN!”

The Windsor sisters, in their black and white linen, were each wearing faux-gold headdresses like Egyptian princesses, a yin-yang symbol pressed into each of the headdresses just over their foreheads, faux gold bangles on their wrists, their eyes and lips heavy with gold makeup. They each rode bareback at the front of two lines of horses, their Arabians entering at different sides of the tent. At first, their entrance on horseback, with their prancing, pawing mounts, looked almost unremarkable —

— Then each sister jumped up, standing on their respective horses’ backs, then passing each other, leapt from their own mounts, clean through the air, to their sister’s horse.

Even Damian could not help but marvel as the Windsors vaulted through the air, spinning and twirling with utter grace from each trotting horse to the next, occasionally doing handstands and cartwheels between their steeds’ backs. The crowd lost their minds, stamping and screaming as the sisters leapt one last time to the dusty floor, bowing just as Noor made her cats’ entrance, prompting them to leap through flaming hoops, her whip lashing with all the fury and command of some primeval goddess. She was almost unrecognizable in all gold fabric and gold-and-brown makeup, her dark hair braided with gold ribbons and beads, her outfit clinging to her lean, muscular body so that when she moved, she looked almost like one of her lionesses.

 _Al-Abbas,_ Damian thought. _“Of the lion.” Of course._

The tigers roared loud enough to part the crowd’s hair, and Noor cracked her whip again, giving the powerful impression that both she and the wild beasts were only just restrained.

Dancers in multicolored, glittering outfits twirled around the sandy rings, ribbons spinning around them, Alejandro’s knives flashing, the jugglers’ red-and-glittered balls spinning in the air. The adult elephants, brilliant drapery covering their backs and heads, reared up on their hind legs, trumpeting the circus’ grand entrance to the spellbound crowd. From nowhere in particular, confetti rained, and even when Damian squinted up through the golden dust and scintillating bodies, he couldn’t quite see the source.

Only one act was missing from the grand entrance. He looked up to the high wires, but the spotlight left them alone, abandoned in the dark. He was surprised, wondering if Mary’s pregnancy had left them exempt, or if they had all come down with a bad cold — which he doubted, considering that Dick had been well enough to very enthusiastically and noisily eat large amounts of chicken and potatoes for dinner an hour previously.

Either way, he supposed it was just as well. He firmly believed that no pregnant woman could perform on such a level, let alone that she should.

 _What does it matter?_ hissed a voice in his head. _She’s going to die in less than two months. You know this. Why should you be concerned for what she does in the meantime?_

_Quite true, he thought. This whole show, this farcical mask of happiness, is a waste of time. It’s all going to come crashing down, like the cheap, painted theater set it really is._

But he couldn’t tear his eyes away from it anyway.

As the grand entrance ended, the performers drew back into the shadows, and the crowd cheered their approval to the high heavens.

“AND NOW,” bellowed Haly, “TO START YOU FOLKS OFF, WE’VE GOT A REAL TREAT. ALL THE WAY FROM BANGALORE, THE MASTER OF MAGIC, THE PRINCE OF ILLUSION, THE EMPEROR OF ENCHANTMENT: THE GREAT KHAN!”

Kiran Patel in his purple-and-black suit and top hat, his unusually feminine face shining with shimmery makeup, liquid eyes lined with black kohl, appeared in a flash of pink smoke with the strikingly young and very buxom Soledad Diaz, who had a fantastic mane of thick red-auburn waves and was wearing something that looked little more than a gold beaded bikini decorated with fringe. The magician took his bow, his assistant attracted a chorus of whistles and catcalls from the male audience members, and the show truly began.

The next two hours almost seemed to blur together in a swirl of color and sound, like dripping brushstrokes of oil paint running over each other, like a handful of glitter thrown over it all, like a glorious mess of a masterpiece.

Damian didn’t take his eyes off it the entire time, moments standing out to him in tandem: Alejandro in red, his mustache waxed to perfection, flashing his knives with the kind of skill and grace that many of his grandfather’s assassins would literally die for; the great elephants showing off to thunderous applause, waving their trunks like genteel celebrities at a ticker-tape parade; a crowd of clowns tumbling over each other, pretending to be office workers goofing up again and again under a very exasperated boss; a handsome brunette woman with a skintight violet leotard and a glittery parasol, walking the high wire and pretending to nearly fall to a chorus of gasps; the black-and-white horses running around each other at full gallop while their mistresses effortlessly cartwheeled from back to back and didn’t even get their headdresses knocked awry; the fire-breathers, dressed as two devils, blowing out twenty-foot near-Biblical columns of flame; Noor lashing her whip so that the ferocious cats did her whim, leaping and pouncing and roaring, a awe-striking show of power and barely-contained wildness that would’ve made William Blake weep.

Damian blinked hard, realizing as the crowd applauded once more that he hadn’t moved in two hours, that every bit of him ached from holding his stance for so long. But he couldn’t move, rooted to the spot as Jack Haly bowed and accepted the audience’s delight.

“THANK YOU! THANK YOU, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!” he boomed. “AH, YOU’VE BEEN A WONDERFUL AUDIENCE. AND HASN’T IT BEEN A WONDERFUL SHOW!”

The crowd roared its assent.

“BUT WAIT! THE SHOW’S NOT OVER YET! WE STILL HAVE ONE...MORE...ACT!”

Murmurs of anticipation arose.

“YES, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE FINALE YOU’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR!”

A drumroll began, growing faster and louder as the excitement of the crowd built up once more.

“YOU’VE ALL HEARD OF THEM! YOU WONDER IF WHAT YOU’VE HEARD IS TRUE...IF IT WILL LIVE UP TO THE MYTH. WELL, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, YOU’RE ABOUT TO SEE FOR YOURSELF THAT IT IS!”

The cheers began to grow in volume...

“HERE THEY ARE —”

A spotlight began to move up to the dizzying full height of the big top...

“THE FAMILY LIKE NONE OTHER, THE GREATEST ACROBATS IN AMERICA —”

Six silhouettes could now be seen at the board hundreds of feet above the ground...

“THE ONE-AND-ONLY, THE LEGENDS —”

The roll of the drums and the screams of the audience grew to a crescendo...

“THE _FABULOUS FLYING GRAYSONS!_ ”

The spotlight hit them; the next cheer was the loudest Damian had ever heard. He blinked hard once more, staring almost uncomprehending at the family.

The bottom half of all their leotards was black, the men in full-length pants, the women in skirts. But the top half was vivid scarlet emblazoned with gold, and Damian realized with a start that with the color scheme...the littlest boy waving happily to the audience really _did_ look like a robin so far above the ground.

He pulled out a pair of binoculars that he’d “borrowed” from the parents’ room earlier and examined them, focusing first on the ones he hadn’t yet met. The other half the the family was, he decided, rather underwhelming. Richard Grayson Sr. was unfortunately not as handsome as his brother; they had the same deep brown skin and wavy black hair, but Richard’s thick mustache was unflattering and his hair was graying early, and Karla Grayson, with her coffee-grounds-colored hair and heavy jaw, was, in comparison to Mary’s radiance, rather plain, even as they both smiled and waved. John Jr., Dick’s cousin, who looked about twelve or thirteen, was tall and lanky and somewhat sullen, and had unfortunately inherited his mother’s hair, and his father’s fleshy nose and weak chin.

The difference really was astounding. John looked perfectly at home, brilliant and beaming with delight, waving brightly, his kind dark eyes crinkled with joy; while as strands of her curly hair escaped her ponytail to frame her face, Mary was calmer, seeming to truly glow from within, and her smile was one of utter peace and contentment. Their combined beauty and total happiness was striking; no wonder, he thought, that the audience loved them so much, screaming for them like they needed nothing else in life. Dick did nothing but help his parents’ case, with his bubbly, unconfined exuberance, his bobbing little waves, he swiftly earned himself squeals and sighs of endearment. And alright, _perhaps_ Damian could see why he might come off as a _little bit_ endearing, especially if you didn’t know how annoying he really was.

“NOW FOLKS, THE FLYING GRAYSONS WILL PERFORM THEIR DEATH-DEFYING STUNTS, AS ALWAYS, _WITHOUT_ THE AID OF A NET!” Haly continued to the thunderous cheers. Then Haly held up a hand, and the audience grew silent. The ringmaster’s voice came down a few notches too. “Let’s be quiet now folks...and watch this extraordinary family work their magic!”

That was the Graysons’ cue to begin. They immediately stopped waving, and the women and boys took their places; the men each selecting a trapeze bar and riding it to the opposite board on the other side of the tent. Even such a simple motion, admittedly, looked perfectly easy in the brothers’ hands; nothing existed now but the family’s ease in the air.

Damian observed through the binoculars that the men seemed to be the ones about to perform the stunts, while their respective women would catch them. The boys stood back for now, eyes fixated on their parents. 

Richard went first. His wife gripped the catch bar, and he drew back, then leapt — turning upside down and twisting one leg over the trapeze as he flew, Karla flipping upside down in mid-air, her knees bent over the bar, grasping her husband by one hand as she pulled him across thin air —

— while it was John’s turn. While his brother had held on, he leapt from the trapeze halfway across, turning three somersaults in less time than it took to draw breath, while Mary dangled by one leg, snatching her husband like a heron swooping up a fish.

Damian was breathless at this show of athleticism. So it was true. Both brothers really were worth all the hype and more, gloriously reflecting their family’s legacy, the bloodline of acrobats; they seemed to _own_ the air.

(Just as much as the man who would be Robin, Nightwing, and Batman would do many years later.)

Karla, he had to admit, was good too. But Mary...he had been _wrong_ about her, he saw. Pregnant or not, a woman or not, she was every bit as graceful and daring as the men. She was no Flying Grayson by birth, but nonetheless, in skill, she was truly her husband’s equal.

The audience gasped in awe, and when the couples reached the platform, they switched places; the women now soared through the air, leaping from the bars, flinging themselves horizontal, spinning midair so that it looked impossible to catch them —

But they were caught, they grabbed their husbands’ hands, then, as the trapeze lifted up into the air, the men rose off the bar. Husband and wife turned over each other, somersaulting through the air, trading places, so that the women wrapped their legs around the bar and again brought the men safely to the platform.

The audience screamed themselves hoarse as the brothers and their wives kept flying through the dusty red-striped sky of the big top, jumping and turning and holding on just by the tips of their fingers, the women’s hair flying out behind them like wings. Damian couldn’t stop watching, utterly entranced. They may have just been carnies. But the power and grace in their movement, in their freedom, would’ve made anyone in his grandfather’s League breathless with envy and awe.

He realized something.

They were not just good. They were beautiful, really. Like art. Something worth admiring...and preserving.

As he understood that, Damian felt an odd cracking in his chest. Like something had broken.

He sucked in a breath, then tried to shake off the feeling; he kept watching the acrobats, watching them perform shocking act after shocking act that kept the audience terrified that they would fall...but they never did. They were as home in the air as any bird or bat.

It could’ve been minutes or hours later when this time, when the men prepared to ride to the other platform, they extended their reach across the platform. Recognizing their cue, the two sons each darted forward, taking their fathers’ hands eagerly. Even John Jr. brightened, and the look of utter excitement and joy on Dick’s face would’ve been too much to be genuine on anyone else.

The boys soared by their fathers’ hands across the tent, then when they started back again, their fathers launched them like birds from a nest.

They caught their mothers just by the fingers, then flipped backwards, twirling twice through the air before grabbing their fathers again. The crowd gasped, but the boys just kept moving back and forth between their parents, until, at last, the boys and men remounted their far platform.

The fathers launched their sons into the air one last time.

After a single midair flip, John Jr. caught Karla’s outstretched hands with perfect ease, but Dick — Dick didn’t stop there.

Instead, Dick moved with all the grace that Damian knew, moved like wind upon the air; he spun, somersaulting through the air—

— not once —

—not twice —

— _four goddamn times_ before he finally flew away with his mother.

Damian’s mouth fell open.

The audience lost their minds. They leapt to their feet, screaming and stamping, while Dick, grinning like a maniac, stood atop the platform and welcomed their adoration; he lifted his arms in the air like he was giving everyone a hug, then twirled his hand while he bowed dramatically, and otherwise generally hammed it up. Karla and Richard looked shocked and even angry, John Jr. scowled irritably, but it didn’t matter. Dick had captivated every single other soul under that tent.

Dick’s parents embraced him, beaming proudly, waving some more while Dick bowed. The audience kept standing and cheering; Haly spread his arms magnanimously.

“THAT WAS THE FABULOUS FLYING GRAYSONS, FOLKS! GIVE THEM A BIG HAND!”

They obliged, continuing to clap and cheer for forever, for a full minute before Haly took off his top hat and sunk into one last bow.

“AND THAT’S ALL, EVERYBODY! GOODNIGHT, TALLAHASSEE!”

Damian withdrew from the tent flap, finally sinking down in darkness to the soft Florida earth. He pressed his hand to his mouth, taking a deep breath, overcome by those strange emotions. Treacherous, weakling tears pricked at his eyes, and he kept them away, kept his breathing steady. He would not cry, even when he was alone, even when he was feeling such a way.

But nonetheless. He knew. Something inside him had broken.

 

* * *

 

Despite the fact that they had their next show in Jacksonville in less than twenty hours, the carnies insisted on a small celebration to honor the success of their first show of the year. So that was how Damian found himself sitting in front of a roaring bonfire, surrounded on all sides by the circus folk, most of whom had now changed out of their costumes, laughing and chatting and toasting marshmallows and cooking hot dogs and drinking liquor straight from the bottle.

“Great job, everybody,” Jack Haly said jovially. He looked very different from earlier in a white button-down, suspenders, and worn black jeans, his voice hoarse from all the shouting throughout the night.

Around them, the sideshow trailers and carnival attractions still blinked fluorescent pink and yellow light, and the air still smelled like salted butter and spun sugar and animal sweat. Despite their high spirits, everyone seemed at least some degree of exhausted. The children had been shooed off to bed, and Samson Jones probably should’ve joined them; he’d fallen asleep at the feet of three of the clowns, and someone had thrown a horse blanket over him.

Alejandro talked happily in Spanish with an unfamiliar man beside him, presumably his best friend from Guatemala. The two barely seemed to notice anyone else. Similarly, River the deep-voiced bartender-slash-barista kept the liquor bottles flowing and flirted openly with Otto the elephant trainer; Willow Windsor was playfully arm-wrestling with the illustrated man, and not only did the two not notice, but Damian suspected there could’ve been an all-out brawl around them before River and Otto would’ve looked up.

Haly’s employees generally seemed to be as happy with him as he was with them.

“We know we did a great job, Pop,” laughed the tightrope walker, the handsome brunette. “You don’t pay us to be mediocre, I hope.”

Chuckling, Haly took a sip from a bottle of Redbreast whiskey. The tightrope walker took the bottle next and chugged it for all she was worth.

“I hope you sleep that off before the show tomorrow, Maggie.”

“No force in the world could get me drunk at this point, Pop.”

Soledad, who also looked very different in her jeans and Black Canary t-shirt, sipped her beer in silence, and the Patels just leaned against each other while they watched their marshmallows char. One of the clowns tackled his hot dogs with great cheer, and Amy Liu the veterinarian alternated makgeolli with marshmallows, lightly slapping the hand of anyone who attempted to take either from her.

But, Damian realized as he looked through the flickering flames, not everyone was in a good mood or getting along.

The Grayson brothers sat next to each other on the opposite side of the fire, their wives on their other sides, and Richard and Karla were having a low, furious discussion with John and Mary.

“John, this is getting out of hand,” Richard was saying. “When are you going to admit that there’s a problem?”

“Problem? I don’t see what the problem is,” John returned, moving slightly away from his brother. Richard bristled. 

“The _problem_ is that _your_ son is hogging the spotlight again — literally. He’s improvising during the show, putting in flashier moves and showing off for the audience. _My_ son is relegated to playing second fiddle to someone three years younger than him, with three years’ less experience. How exactly do you not see a problem?”

“Showing off for the audience is literally what we do for a living, Richard,” Mary retorted, glowering at her brother-in-law. “We’re not going to ask Dick to tone himself down and stop performing at his best because _you’re_ insecure that your son isn’t as good as someone three years younger than him.”

 _That_ struck a nerve.

Richard withdrew, outraged.

“‘Isn’t as good’?” Karla hissed. “Your son isn’t _better_. He’s just attention-hungry.”

“Yes, _that’s_ a real problem in a circus performer,” John returned. “He’s a _child_ , Karla. Children tend to love attention. Look, I’m sorry if JJ feels left out, but if this is just about you and your hurt pride, I don’t give a damn. I’m not going to ask him to stop doing what he loves best or to do it less. Your pride isn’t more important than his confidence and faith in himself.”

 _Dick Grayson has faith in himself?_  Damian thought. _That’s different._

“Of course _you_ don’t care. It’s easy being the good-looking one, the one that everyone loves,” Richard said bitterly. Damian sensed that this was just the surface of a long-standing resentment. “I care about my son’s faith in himself. But you, John, you don’t care about anyone but you and yours —”

“Richard, shut up,” Mary snapped. “And ask yourself: is this really about our children, or is it about your brother and you?”

“Of course not,” Karla said with great dignity. “They’re equals in ability, anyone with eyes can see that.”

“And anyone with eyes can also see that the younger Grayson brother is more conventionally attractive and has greater charisma,” Damian muttered under his breath.

“What?” murmured Samson from under the horse blanket.

“Nothing. Go back to sleep.”

Mary ignored her sister-in-law.

“Don’t take your issues with John out on my son, alright? And if this is really about our children, _keep_ it _just_ about our children.”

“Mary, you are such a —”

Whatever Mary was, Damian never found out. While the couples were arguing, Soledad had gotten up and moved to the edge of the group to retrieve another beer from the cooler. While she was doing that, three big and rough-looking Florida men, who’d been in the audience earlier and had now been blending in among the roustabouts, swiftly accosted her.

“Hello darling,” one of them leered. “We _loved_ you during the show.”

“How about giving a kiss? Or maybe a different show just for us?”

Soledad jerked away from the third man as he patted her backside.

“ _Vete_ , _bastardos_ ,” she hissed, grabbing her beer and attempting to walk back to her seat. But the third man snatched her by the wrist.

“Don’t play hard to get, baby, it doesn’t suit you.”

“Everyone knows what Mexican girls are really like...” the second agreed, openly staring at her chest. “Firecrackers in bed, hey?”

“I’m Puerto Rican, asshole. Let go of me.”

“Talk some Spanish for us first, darling.”

“Or better yet, put that mouth to _real_ use.”

The second man tried to grab her breasts and she lashed out, driving the heel of her shoe into his shin. Apparently, she was either very strong or wearing very pointed shoes, because he let out an earsplitting yowl of pain that drew the attention of literally everybody else at once. Damian jumped to his feet, taking in the scene at once — and he wasn’t the only one.

“You fucking wetback bitch!” The second man grasped his injured leg; his friend drew his hand back to hit Soledad, but he was too slow. Three hands grasped his wrist, yanking it back away from her face.

Damian blinked in surprise. Samson had woken up lightning fast, shooting out from under the horse blanket to tower over the three rubes. He’d been joined by Shanti the snake charmer and Alice the bearded lady; Shanti’s face and stance were cool, only her eyes burned with her protective outrage, while Alice looked openly murderous under her impressive facial hair, tattoos rippling along her big arms.

“Where I come from, it’s considered rude to hit a lady,” Samson rumbled. “Or for that matter, to grab her without her wanting you to. Do you want to apologize on your own, or do we have to make you?”

The injured man had clearly lost his common sense to his pain, because he spat:

“I don’t have to apologize for shit, you big black bastard.”

Shanti’s long sharp nails pinched the side of his neck; he howled in pain again and his friends took a step back. Not a single one of the carnies looked sympathetic.

“Sexist _and_ racist morons,” said Alice in her marijuana-raspy voice. “How charming.”

“Again,” Samson repeated, an edge entering his voice, “do you want to apologize?”

The third man was apparently the most sensible, because he instantly let go of Soledad’s wrist and started groveling.

“I’m very, very sorry,” he babbled. “I won’t bother her again.”

“Nice,” yawned Shanti languidly, letting go of his friend’s neck. “What about the rest of you?”

The second man moaned in pain, trying to massage his neck and leg at the same time. The first man squirmed under their grips.

“I said, what about the rest of —” Shanti suddenly doubled over, taken over by a coughing fit. It was an appalling, shudder-bringing sound, like her throat and lungs had been scraped to shreds and she was trying to hack up all the scar tissue. Alice darted over to support her friend by the shoulders, while the men stared at her in horror and disgust.

“We’re sorry, we’re sorry!” the first and second men quickly shouted. “Just don’t let that one cough on me!”

“Good to hear,” Samson said, letting go. The three men scampered off, quickly getting lost in the shadows outside the field, and then while Alice was helping Shanti through her coughing, he placed a huge hand on Soledad’s shoulder. “You alright there?”

“I will be,” she sighed.

The four of them moved back to the fire, sitting down again. Alice took a deep breath, her hands shaking slightly like the whole thing had rattled her, and she lit one of her joints against the flames. She then handed it out to Shanti, who fluidly swept it up and took a long pull, the tip glowing like the coals. She breathed out the white smoke in slow curls, dragonlike, and her coughing almost instantly tapered off.

“Shanti, are you sure you should —?”

“I only do soft drugs these days,” she replied with dark humor, smiling honey-slow through a mouthful of smoke. “Don’t worry about me, Sita, I’m dying anyway. A little weed won’t kill me faster.”

_Dying?_

“What do you mean you’re dying?” Damian burst out. Everyone turned and looked at him. “Why didn’t you hurt those sons of bitches more? And why do you let your women dress like harlots if you know this sort of thing happens? Do you want people to think you’re whores, or that you won’t punish those who go after your people?”

“What kind of eleven-year-old says ‘harlots’?” Rose muttered.

“We didn’t hurt them worse ‘cause we don’t want the authorities coming after us,” Alice answered. “People know we’re freaks enough, we don’t need to go to prison to prove it.” She shuddered, her breaths coming quick. She snatched a pull of Shanti’s joint before handing it back to her, her hyperventilating coming to a swift end. “It’s scary enough...anyway. We do protect our own. Always do. They know that now.”

“Yes, that’s all very well, but again, what does this one mean that she’s dying?”

Shanti shifted in place.

“Well, that coughing wasn’t a display of my dying. Since everyone sick in this circus stays away from me, I haven’t had caught anything else in a while.” She nodded gratefully towards the Patels, who were now sitting on either side of Soledad and trying to comfort her. “Just sucked in a little of the fire smoke. I’ve coughed so much over the last few years my lungs are fifty different kinds of fucked up.”

“Yes, but what do you —” Something Dick had said a couple days prior suddenly lined up with what she was saying now. “You have HIV, don’t you. You used to be an addict, and now you have HIV.”

She nodded.

“And I can’t afford any of those fancy pills to take care of it, so yeah. If I catch a cold, I’m laid low for weeks. If I catch the flu, I’ll almost certainly get pneumonia or bronchitis too, and...” She drew her finger across her throat in a long, sweeping gesture.

Damian wondered if a Lazarus Pit could cure HIV, if there was any chance that a person without much money could live a life with AIDS. Then he wondered why he cared. She was just a junkie; she’d been stupid enough to willingly take the drugs and introduce the virus into her own body.

“You were an idiot,” he snapped. “A complete, utter idiot.”

Several people gasped. Shanti didn’t even blink, just lifted her head slowly, looking at him through her long lashes and heavy lids.

“Yeah, I was. I was a dumbass kid screwing around with heroin.” She took another pull off the joint. “You’re absolutely right.”

He started, gaping at her.

“And I know someday I’m gonna die for that, and for being poor to boot.”

He kept staring.

“Got anything to say to that?”

He had nothing.

“You don’t deserve to die for having been an idiot,” Kiran protested. He still had an arm around Soledad. “You can’t think that making a mistake means it’s okay that you’re going to die for it.”

“‘Okay’ isn’t the word for it, Kiran. It’s just the way it is.”

Haly got to his feet. He walked over, extending hands to the two women.

“Soledad, Shanti, perhaps you should go to bed,” he said, his voice unusually soft. “Go up to the train, sleep as long as you like.”

The two of them apparently knew better than to argue. Shanti slowly and deliberately stubbed out her joint, and the women moved up to the train, soon out of reach of the light.

While everyone else’s drinking and eating became much more subdued, John and Mary got to their feet, moving away from the rest of their family and over to Damian.

He got to his feet, looking up at them.

“She’s really dying, isn’t she.” He was horrified at how subdued he sounded; he cleared his throat. “From that virus.”

“Yes, she is.”

“And those dogs going after your women...”

“Our people do their best to protect each other. It doesn’t always work, but we really do try.”

Mary bent down until she was eye-level with him.

“Which reminds me, Fida...if I hear you calling women whores or harlots again, you’re grounded.”

“How can you ground me?” he grumbled. “I’m not your child.”

“I can by having you do Dick’s chores. Don’t test me.”She straightened again, putting her hand on his shoulder. “Now c’mon. You should go to bed too.”

“I can stay up all night if I need to,” he insisted as the Graysons led him away. “I can stay alert for three days straight, and I will still function perfectly optimally.”

“That’s great,” said John seriously. “You still need to sleep.”

“No, I _don’t_ need to! Treating me like a child again, I will not stand for — ” Something occurred to him. “Wait, I have another question. Why haven’t you told anyone else that you’re having another child? Are you afraid of driving your brother really mad with jealousy?”

Husband and wife exchanged looks.

“I suppose so.”

“Why do you care?”

“Well, it gets annoying dealing with his jealousy, honestly.”

“I wonder that Richard doesn’t really see what he has,” John mused aloud. “Work isn’t everything. He’s been in love with the same person most of his life, and she’s loved him back for all of that, and when they got married his kid was born in less than a year. Then JJ was healthy and strong from the get-go, and everyone in our family were enamored with him instantly. One kid is plenty for him, because he thinks the one he has is utterly perfect.”

“Hardly,” Damian said. “You two are right: _your_ son is _much_ more skilled.”

“Fida, that’s the nicest thing you’ve said about Dick since you got here.”

Damian felt his ears get hot.

“Don’t get used to it.” He paused. “Perhaps Richard sees them as equals, and so doesn’t want your son to get all the attention between two equals — like you clearly do over your brother.”

“Perhaps.” Mary paused. “I guess right now Richard would probably just think we’re looking for more attention with a second kid.” She rested a hand against her still-flat abdomen. Damian swallowed the surge of acid in his throat. “But Fida, you don’t have to worry about our family drama. Just worry about having to do chores or what I’m making for dinner, okay?”

“I’m _not_ a child,” he insisted once more as they steered him inside. “And I’m _not_ tired —” He cut himself off with a massive yawn.

The parents exchanged looks.

“Well, if you don’t want to sleep, at least read something, since you finished _Alice_.” John suggested, handing over another book.

Damian glanced at the cover.

“This is a children’s series.”

“Maybe so, but just take a chance on it, alright? You might like it.” John stretched his arms over his head. Mary put a hand on his shoulder.

“Even if you don’t go to sleep yet, Dick needs some company.”

“He’s asleep. What kind of damn company does he need?” Damian grumbled one more time, but he went into the shared bedroom anyway.

Dick was curled into the thin covers in the fetal position, hair sticking up in tufts, face half-buried in the pillow, snuggling his plush elephant deep into his arms. He looked even younger and smaller while sleeping; it was hard to associate him with the showy performer from earlier that night.

Damian sat down on his camp bed, stripping out of his clothes and into the oversized sleep shirt they’d lent him. Once he was dressed, the Graysons reentered the room in their sleep clothes; him in pajama pants and a t-shirt, her in a nightgown, her hair uncharacteristically loose, wild curls flowing around her shoulders and face. They hovered over their child; John sat down to caress back his son’s hair, gently squeezing his little calloused hand, Mary leaned in to kiss his forehead.

Damian made an involuntary noise in his throat.

“Oh yeah, I know,” Mary said, smirking faintly, “It’s not cool for boys to get kisses from their moms.”

“Go ahead and make jokes, but he really doesn’t need you to.” He pulled the covers up to his chest. “She’s tried, but I haven’t let my mother hug or kiss me since I was a toddler.”

John looked horrified. Mary’s humor faded; she looked rather like she’d been slapped in the face.

“There’s nothing wrong with that. My grandfather agrees and approves; affection makes you soft.” This explains a lot about Grayson, though, he thought.

“Oh, that is some bullshit.”

Before he could fend her off, Mary moved in on him. Her soft curls tickled the side of his face, and her lips pressed against his cheek. He was so shocked that he didn’t stop her; her skin was unusually warm, just like Dick’s, and she smelled like fresh linen and cloves. He was suddenly reminded of the feel of his own mother’s thick hennaed hair and her omnipresent cardamom scent, and he sucked in a sharp breath.

She moved away, taking in his expression. John rested a hand on his head, ruffling his hair; Damian recovered enough to slap the hand away.

“Goodnight, Fida.”

They left him alone in the moonlight, the only sound Dick’s faint snuffling in his sleep. Damian scoffed in repulsion and frustration, then opened the damned book, just for something to do.

_Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much..._

He woke up to streaming sunlight and the train whistle blowing, feeling oddly light, for he’d dreamed of wizards and owls and something like happiness. Then, disgusted with himself, he rolled over, trying to go back to sleep, trying to forget something so silly.

“Are you reading Harry Potter?” exclaimed a familiar voice above him. “I love those books!”

Damian pulled the covers up over his head. Just his luck to have the brat still around, especially with the memories of that breathtaking performance from last night still in his head.

Dick Grayson made those thoughts and feelings he despised so, so much harder to forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> vete — go away  
> bastardos — bastards


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for this being so late. That’s all I can say. But I promise to have the next chapter up sooner next time.

Jacksonville came and went, and soon, the train had rumbled up through the wetlands and out of Florida into Alabama. They had stopped just outside of Montgomery, and some people, more than others, were happy about going back to the Deep South.

_“I wish I was in Dixie, hooray, hooray, in Dixieland I’ll take my stand, to live and die in Dixie, away, away, away down south in Dixie, away, away, away down south —”_

“Americans,” Damian muttered into his coffee cup as Rose’s singing arose from across the field, the sounds of hissing oil and rising steam mingling with her voice. The windows had been cracked open, and he could hear her all the way from where her own trailer was parked, where she was hanging her laundry on the line in a broad-brimmed hat and pink sundress.

John had gone to get in a workout before lunch, and Dick had run out after him, father and son now undoubtedly exercising together. Damian had cast aside Harry Potter when Dick was around, but now that the child had left, he began reading _The_ _Chamber_ _of_ _Secrets_ — because he spitefully refused to read a novel that John had praised and had absolutely no interest in Mary’s cookbooks or her books written by women.

Mary, for her part, seemed to have been inspired by their surroundings, because she was frying catfish for lunch. A pot of rice cooked just next her frying pan, the lid slightly cracked so that copious amounts of steam could escape. She had propped a handheld radio on the counter, and the news station was blaring information about the war in Afghanistan, directly contrasting with the cheeriness of Rose’s — appropriately tone-deaf — singing.

Her hair tied in a messy topknot, wearing a floral-print t-shirt with her usual faded jeans, Mary flipped over the catfish. Through the window, Damian glimpsed the laundry lines hanging between neighbors: the tightrope walker Maggie’s violet leotard fluttered next to Kiran Patel’s magician suit, the Kostos’s line was laden with female undergarments just next to Samson Jones’ strongman suit, and the Graysons’ red-black-and-gold uniforms rubbed shoulders with the crimson silk robes, embroidered with Chinese dragons, of the trailer next door, clothes flapping gently in the breeze like a flock of benevolent parrots. The sun hung high in the cloudless sky, the city of Montgomery loomed gently nearby, and despite Rose’s singing (she’d now moved on to “Battle Hymn of the Republic”), the day was undeniably lovely.

As the staticky news clattered on, the host hinted at an American operation in progress, the newest movement against al Qaeda, then dutifully spoke of the latest war dead: in an their attempt to defuse anti-aircraft missiles, three Danes and two Germans had been killed, and on top of that, eight more people had been wounded.

“It never ends,” Mary muttered, clearly thinking Damian wouldn’t hear her over the hissing of the oil and steam. “When is it _going_ to end? And right next to the Kabul airport too...” She muttered something in _řomani_ _čhib_ he would wager was a curse, and something else in French that definitely was.

Damian shut the book with force, staring at the cover.

Mary then pulled the fish out of the frying pan and the rice off the heat, clattering them both down with unnecessary force. She then leaned all the way out the window towards the trailer next door, which, like theirs, was rusty red, but with wind chimes hanging off the entrance and ringing in the spring wind.

“Laverne!” she called. “Laverne!”

Damian didn’t know who he expected to answer to _Laverne_. Either way, the inhabitant of the next trailer opened her window, and Damian found himself staring at an old Asian woman, dressed in jeans and a green blouse, her long silver hair tied up in a ponytail, her little face as wrinkled as the surface of a walnut, grinning like a maniac, festooned with enough bangles and rings to open her own jewelry shop.

“What’s up, Mary?” she greeted, her accent undeniably Pacific Northwest.

“Not much. Do you have any almond cookies left?”

“Maybe,” the woman, apparently Laverne, said cheerfully. “What do I get for sharing my almond cookies?”

“Well, John’s running late, so I’ll give you his share of fried catfish and rice.”

“Sounds like a fair deal,” Laverne agreed. “Especially as you’re throwing refusal to take care of your husband into the bargain.”

“He can make a sandwich, he won’t starve.”

Laverne cackled brightly.

“Okay, I’ll get you those cookies, Mary. I appreciate a good fish, and you’re the only non-Asian I trust to make rice.” She paused. “Was that not PC?” Then shrugged. “Ah, who cares, it’s just the two of us.”

Damian suppressed a snort. Mary openly chuckled, a little bit of the tension releasing from her shoulders. She rapidly filled a dented Tupperware with catfish and rice, marched through the door, and within two minutes returned with a different Tupperware crammed to the gills with cookies.

“What in God’s name are those for?” Damian asked.

“Drug-like happiness,” Laverne called from across the way. Damian jumped; the crone had excellent hearing. “My cookies — actually, all my cooking — are the greatest high known to man. You’ll thank me later, kiddo.”

“She’s arrogant,” Damian observed as the old woman shut her window again. “I will admire her for it if she’s really as good as all that; even though cooking is such a banal, trivial thing.”

Mary smiled dryly, even as she still looked tired. She then reached over and abruptly clicked the radio over from the news to hip-hop; he then heard Tupac Shakur’s voice from the speakers instead of the parade of death going on in the Middle East.

“C’mon, Fida. Have something to eat.”

They ate with no conversation, the silence only broken by the various musicians’ steady beats, rapping about sex and power and family and the brutality of gang violence and the difficulty of living in the worst part of the city, the prejudice that had brought them to where they were.

Damian found that ridiculous. One could not blame one’s surroundings for the way one was. Other people and other circumstances, weaker minds, were bound to get in your way; that was a fact of life. One had to be strong, self-reliant, no matter what.

Like his family. Like what the al Ghuls made him to be. He was a warrior, a leader, no matter what. Their deserving heir. His grandfather had both purred that into his ear while priming him to take over the League and world someday, and beaten it into him, roared it at him, when Damian had been less than satisfactory.

Grayson — his version of Grayson, the adult — had said, when he didn’t know that anyone was eavesdropping, that Ra’s was a hypocrite, an abuser, that he had subjugated his children and made Damian a killer. That Damian was still young, there was hope; he didn’t have to be like that. Didn’t have to stay bogged down in Ra’s’ way of thinking about the world and other people.

Thinking about that, his grip tightened on his fork.

He and Mary had finished lunch and were on their second cups of coffee by the time John and Dick finally burst through the door. Father and son were beaming, laughing, covered in dust and sweat, John affectionately ruffling Dick’s hair while the boy giggled.

“Well, you two missed lunch,” Mary informed them.

“Not yet I didn’t,” Dick insisted, promptly going over and heaping his plate full. When John attempted to do the same, his wife slapped his hand.

“Nuh-uh. None for you, John Frederick Grayson. Though there _would’ve_ been, if you’d come back at noon like you _said_ you would...”

While Dick was stuffing his face next to the stove, John tilted his head to the side, scrunching his eyebrows exaggeratedly. To Damian, this looked bizarre, ridiculous, on a grown man. He’d been told that his own Grayson, while grown, acted playfully with his own woman; Damian found it very hard to believe that he would do that, or that it would _work_ on his woman, a sentiment echoed with Grayson Sr.

“I’m sorry, _miri_ _ćerxai_.” He slipped around the back of her chair, bending to wrap his arms around her waist and lift her up, making her yelp. “I’m a terrible husband. Truly terrible. But I love you.” He pressed his lips to her neck. “Let me make it up to you, in any way possible. Truly. Any way.” He kept kissing her; it was getting quite ridiculous. “I’m a terrible, horrible man, for making you wait while you slaved over a hot stove, you are my bright star, my love, but I, poor fellow, am just a worm on the ground compared to you...”

Mary rolled her eyes, but much to Damian’s shock, she immediately also blushed and giggled like a young girl, tilting her head back, leaning into his touch. All the tension fell away from her body, and she hummed gently as he kept babbling, then pressed his lips one last time to her cheek.

“Gross,” Dick said conversationally, mouth crammed full of fish. “Oh hey, Laverne sent over cookies.”

“Finish your lunch first, little robin,” his mother said, her eyes still tired, but her tone had shifted to downright affectionate. She remained wrapped up in her husband’s arms. “Don’t skip it for dessert, okay?”

“Oh, hey, speaking of lunch, that reminds me.” The boy stuffed the last of the rice in his mouth. “Dad said he’d take me and Fida into the city after we eat.”

Damian did another double take.

“Do I get a say in this?” he demanded before Mary could say anything. “Who says I want to go with you? Tt. Where do you get off, brat, making decisions for me?”

Dick rolled his eyes and shrugged.

“Okay, fine, we’ll just leave you here with Mom.”

“No, absolutely not. I refuse to spend another moment in this rickety trailer. Take me into the city.”

“Told you,” Dick muttered to his father. John nodded solemnly, and father and son both picked up a cookie at the same time.

Damian huffed at them, and went to go get his shoes on.

 

* * *

 

If one was used to Gotham, Montgomery was rather underwhelming. The gracefully arched cream and pink buildings seemed to rise a couple hundred feet at most from the ground, the sidewalks lined with blossoming trees, gently flowing fountains in the squares. Under the cloudless spring sky, it all seemed inoffensive to the point of bland to Damian.

“I can never get used to how pretty it is in the South,” John remarked. Dick had already run a block ahead to look at everything, then run back, then run forward again to pet some random person’s dog. “Oh hey, used bookstore. Don’t wander off, okay Fida? But if you want to, feel free for you and Dick to come inside too.”

“Like you need any more books,” Damian groused, but John had already darted over to the window display, admiring the new arrivals for a few moments before he went inside. The front door was lilac-purple, and the owner had hand-painted the outside sign with the name: _Antebellum_ _Apologues_.

Damian barely had time to sigh before Dick came tearing back in his direction, cheeks flushed with excitement and holding an enormous ice cream cone in both hands.

“You _don’t_ need any more sugar.”

“You sound like Mom,” Dick smirked, then, before Damian could really register this, “And besides, one of these is for you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Damian said haughtily, drawing himself to his full, towering height of four foot five. “I don’t eat ice cream. I have no need for frivolous sugary treats.”

Dick looked skeptical.

“I only eat to give myself necessary strength and fuel. Not for pleasure. I do not have dessert.”

“You do now,” Dick decided, thrusting one of the cones into Damian’s hands. “Every kid has dessert. Now c’mon, eat it before it melts.” He then lifted his own — strawberry covered in rainbow sprinkles — and took a tremendous bite that left half his face smeared pink.

Damian pondered with disdain the mound of chocolate in his hand.

“Oh c’mon. You wouldn’t eat the cookies, you won’t eat the ice cream — this doesn’t appeal to you at all?”

“I haven’t had unnecessary treats since I was four years old,” he declared. “Just because you’re a child who likes childish things, doesn’t mean —”

He was cut off by Dick grabbing his wrist and shoving the ice cream into his face.

Damian roared with rage and lashed out.

“God damn you, Richard! God damn you to hell!”

Dick giggled maniacally and leapt out of striking range.

“It’s good, isn’t it?”

The mess dripping down his cheeks and chin _did_ taste good, and oddly addictive too, but Damian ignored this for the indignity of what had been done to him.

“You insignificant little brat! You little termite, you smear of an ant on the sidewalk!”

“Have you really never had ice cream before?” Dick asked, taking another bite of his own, moving closer again. “What on earth were your parents like?”

Damian hit him this time, cuffing him around the head. Dick yelped and rubbed the bruise; Damian felt no sympathy for him, that had been a little strike, if he’d really been trying he could’ve killed him in a single blow.

“My parents are the greatest man and woman of their respective spheres of influence,” he snapped haughtily. “Which is more than I can say for _yours_.”

“My parents _are_ the greatest at what they do,” Dick said matter-of-factly. “Even if what they do isn’t a ‘sphere of influence,’ —” he did exaggerated air quotes, “— whatever _that_ is.”

“...You are _so_ stupid.”

Dick just shrugged.

Then the younger boy took what was left of his ice cream and moved over to the edge of the sidewalk, about five feet away from where a young couple were enjoying their lunch at an outdoor table. Damian deliberately sat away from him, but not far enough that he couldn’t hear the loud crunching of the ice cream cone, or the conversation taking place between the young couple.

“— it’s too late, my brother just enlisted,” the woman was saying. A Southern drawl colored her words, so that it seemed like her voice was spilling out as viscous and thick as syrup. “He’s in basic training now, should ship out to Kabul within a few weeks.”

Her male companion nodded solemnly.

“Good for Jesse. You know...Melissa, I...I’ve been thinking about enlisting, too,” he admitted. His own voice was rougher, but just as slow and drawling. “Ever since September, I can’t stop thinking ‘bout those terrorists. Every fucking one of them America-hatin’ Middle Easterns. I mean, if they had the goddamn nerve to attack us on our own soil —”

“Bill, you can’t,” Melissa protested. “Those monsters, those terrorists...I’m scared ‘nough of ‘em for my brother, baby. Those Islamists aren’t even human, they’re so horrible...what if they take you ‘way from me too?”

“Ain’t nothing could take me from you, Lissie.” He kissed the top of her hand. “The country needs me much as it needs Jesse. More n’ more Islamists are born every day, how many of them are gonna grow up to hate us, hate our country n’ everything we stand for?”

Melissa’s eyes welled up.

“Bill, baby, I get that. Those Arabs wanna wipe us out. Think the world would be better off without us. But why does it have to be y’all who goes?”

“Our country needs _everyone_ , Lissie. _Everyone’s_ gotta protect our home.”

Dick placed the last of his ice cream cone between his teeth and crunched it down, drawing the attentions of Bill and Melissa. The two of them started, then, in their light-colored clothes and impeccable fair hair, they stared at the two ice-cream-faced brown-skinned children sitting only a couple paces from them.

“Hi,” Dick said brightly. “Nice day, isn’t it?”

Melissa jerked back with such force that she nearly fell out of her chair. Bill gave the two of them a look of visceral disgust, it was as if they were something stuck to the bottom of his shoe.

Damian’s insides twisted, as though he’d swallowed something rotting.

“What are you looking at, fleas?” he snarled.

Melissa blanched.

“Learn some manners, will y’all?” The look hadn’t left Bill’s face. “Y’all are in good company. Would do you good to act civilized.”

“We _do_ know manners,” Dick protested. “We just choose not to use them, that’s all.”

Melissa shuddered.

“Y’all must not’ve been born or raised right.”

“What do you know of being born to the right parents or raised right, you misshapen cow?” Damian retorted viciously. Dick now looked confused _and_ upset, eyebrows scrunching up, looking back between the two of them.

Bill jumped to his feet while the woman beside him quavered.

“That’s no god damn way to talk to a proper lady.”

“Apt, considering I see no proper ladies here.”

Melissa sobbed, then Bill pulled out a cell phone.

“That’s it. If you two don’t get away I’m callin’ the cops. That is, if y’all don’t want me to kick y’all back to your proper side of town myself.”

Dick flinched.

“Fida,” he whispered, tugging Damian’s sleeve, “we can’t let them call the cops. The cops don’t like my family.”

“I can imagine.”

“Hurry up and git gone,” Bill growled. “I mean it, ya little foreign demon.”

Damian bristled in fury.

But before he could do anything, much to his surprise:

“Nobody talks about my friend like that!” Dick yelled, rocketing to his feet.

In seconds, he’d kicked Bill in the ankle, and the roar that the man let up attracted the attention of not only all the other diners, but the manager of the restaurant as well.

“What is going on here?”

The manager, pink with indignation, came puffing over just as a long shadow was cast over the boys from behind. Damian looked behind him to see John Grayson standing over them, books in his arms, looking perfectly ordinary in his jeans and t-shirt with the cover of _Brave New World_  imprinted on it, a frown on his mustached face.

“Is there a reason that everyone here is converging on my son and his friend?”

“Yes,” the manager huffed, “what seems to be the problem here?”

Bill stood up ramrod straight.

“If y’all will excuse my language, these damn brats insulted my woman and kicked me in the ankle w’no provocation. I want them gone and out.”

The manager huffed and squeaked indignantly, but John just frowned a little deeper.

“‘With no provocation’? That doesn’t sound like my son.”

“There _was_ provocation!” Dick yelped. “The lady said we weren’t civilized and the guy called Fida a foreign demon! Let me kick him again!”

“Sit _down_ and _shut_ _up_ —”

“Hey,” a different customer interrupted, “Ain’t those the Flyin’ Graysons? The gypsy circus acrobats that come ‘round with Haly’s every spring?”

“Yeah, they are,” someone else said. “My niece loves them, but my sister says she saw all them circus kids playing in the dirt and with dangerous animals.”

“I’m not surprised they’re in the circus,” one last person whispered excitedly, staring at John and Dick like they were zoo animals. “All that traveling...I have this friend what visited Europe, he said all them gypsies never settled anywhere, just kept goin’ with the wind. Ain’t that sound like the life?”

“That certainly all does explain a lot,” Melissa said pointedly.

John’s shoulders stiffened, and when he spoke again, his voice was tight.

“It seems to me that these boys were in fact provoked. Try anything, any retaliation, any police calls, and you’re gonna regret it,” he snapped at Bill and Melissa. “And take responsibility for your _own_ actions from now on.” Then: “Dick, Fida, let’s go.”

“I didn’t know them gypsies were so well-spoken,” the one with the Europe-traveling friend murmured as John steered the boys away.

They were barely out of hearing range when Damian snarled:

“ _Fucking_ Americans.”

“ _Damn_ ,” Dick said appreciatively as John exclaimed, “ _Fida_.”

“My father was American!” Damian continued passionately. “My mother got me American citizenship! Even if they hadn’t, I deserve to be here more than any of those worthless amoebas! How dare they!”

“Look on the bright side,” Dick said dryly, “Now you can go hang out with Alejandro, Shanti, the Lius, the Patels, Laverne, Soledad, and the al-Abbas’s.” The boy huffed, balling his small hands into fists. “But they’d better not do that again in front of me. He pissed me off _so_ bad; I might not stop at kicking ankles next time.”

“Officially, as the dad,” John replied, “I can’t condone you two insulting or kicking strangers. But unofficially...” He lowered his voice, “I’m glad you two stood up for yourselves. That’s something my parents never wanted my brother or me to do, and we put up with too much shit because of it.” He smiled a little sadly, then chuckled. “Besides, if your mother had been here, she would’ve been over there beating the hell out of them before you could even react.”

“She _would’ve_ ,” both boys murmured in unison, each thinking of his own mother.

Still managing to hold his book bag with one hand, John hoisted Dick up onto his shoulders and gently clapped Damian on the back. Damian jumped, glaring.

“So. What would make you feel better?”

He huffed, walking out of touching range.

“Is there any sort of cultural exhibit in this backwards city?”

“There’s the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts.”

“Tt. That’ll do.”

“Fine,” Dick sighed. “But when we get to Birmingham, _I_ want to go to the movies.”

Damian scowled at the ground.

 

* * *

 

When they returned, John went straight back to the trailer, but Dick and Damian were more hesitant.

“The last thing I want is to see your mother’s pitying face right now. I need pity from no one. I just wish I’d had a sword with me when those sacks of slime insulted us.”

“Cool. I just wanna go see the elephants.”

The elephants, already in their finery for the night, bedecked in their golds and tassels and velvets like a collection of wealthy aging ladies, had been tethered just next to where the big top. Only baby Clementine remained unadorned and unmoored, bobbing around the adults’ feet with determination, pulling up trunkfuls of new grass. Strangely, Otto was nowhere in sight.

“Betcha five bucks he’s in River’s trailer right now,” Dick said slyly as he patted Willadeene’s trunk. “They’ve been _awfully_ kissy lately.”

Damian rolled his eyes, sitting down in the grass. Clementine plopped herself right down next to him, her head in his lap like a very strange dog.

“Did those people offend you?”

“The people from earlier?” Dick let Willadeene wrap her trunk entirely around his waist. “Yeah. But I get that a lot. Y’know, dirty, wild, uncivilized, that sort of thing.”

“Well, I wonder why they might think that,” he muttered, but even as he said it, a bolt of anger unexplainably went through his stomach.

“It’s okay,” Dick said, voice trembling slightly. He cleared his throat, and then sounded confident. “It’ll get easier when we’re grown up.”

Damian stared at him incredulously.

“Do you really think that? After living with predominantly non-white adults? Do you _honestly_ think that it got easier for _them_ when they grew up?”

Dick faltered. Uncertainty entered his eyes for the first time.

“Honestly. Gain a little perspective,” Damian muttered. “The idiocy and savagery of others plagues us at any age.”

The upset look on Dick’s young face made him slightly uncomfortable, which he tried to push past.

“Tt. Listen when I tell you this, child. Most people are barbarians. Stupid, slovenly, ruled by their baser urges. That is encouraged at youth, never contradicted, and so does not get better with age.” Clementine sneezed. He rested a hand on her head. “They blame others for their problems rather than take responsibility for their own people’s mistakes, cannot see past the severe limits of their own experiences, and are selfish and base, so they think that existing differently is a personal attack on them. Those are the sorts of people you see now, and that does not change as you grow up.”

Dick shook his head vigorously.

“No. No way. People do bad things, yeah, but most people are good.”

Damian laughed bitterly, mockingly. This was almost _exactly_ what _his_ Dick Grayson had said to him: that everyone had good inside them, everyone had inherent worth that did not need to be earned, that was there at birth. What hogwash.

“No they aren’t, child. You know perfectly well that for hundreds if not thousands of years your people the Roma have been murdered, enslaved, kept in squalid conditions, had their children stolen, been treated like objects, raped and forcibly sterilized, subjected to genocide. And for what? Do you think _good_ people would be complicit in that?”

Dick sank to the ground too. With a shock, Damian realized he was crying. He sniffled, grubby hands wiping at his eyes, tears dripping down his cheeks to the grass.

“This cannot be news to you. There are countless ignorant fools that think that my grandfather’s employees are mindless killers, that my mother is an evil monster; it is a thousand times worse with these Americans’ fear of Arabs. My other grandfather’s Catholic family denounced my grandmother for being a Jewess and treated her like she was second-class, and because my father was born half-goyish, her family spitefully refused to take him in when he was a child after — well. Perhaps it is for the best, since my father learned strength and fortitude on his own, as well as not to rely on anyone. Admirable traits. Listen, brat. People are cruel, and selfish, and bigoted, you can never rely on anyone to be around forever, and you would do well to learn from my family and become self-reliant —”

Dick sobbed harder, staggering to his feet and running away again. The elephants huffed, almost like a chorus of sighs; Willadeene reached out after him with her trunk.

“Richard! Richard, get back here! Where are you going?”

Damian roughly got to his feet, making Clementine squeal in surprise and her mother look over. He awkwardly patted her head to calm her down until she was snuffling normally again, then, from the way across the field, he watched the small figure disappear into someone else’s trailer.

Damian ran after him.

The trailer that Dick had disappeared into was painted a bright green, the color of summer leaves. In many ways, the color reminded him with a jolt of his mother, the same green that made up so much of her: her vibrant-hued swooshing silk dresses, her much-worn glittering emerald jewelry, her kohl-lined long-lashed eyes, the color and shape of which he’d inherited from her.

Damian unconsciously reached up to touch at the right one’s corner.

Then he marched up to the trailer door and banged his fist against it.

An unfamiliar Arab man opened up. He was tall and muscular, with coppery skin, thick black hair, equally thick black brows, and a scruffy beard. He worn an olive-green Henley and faded jeans, and a broad leather bracelet embossed with geometric designs on his right wrist. Damian looked up, and was surprised to see good humor sparkling in his brown eyes.

“So you must be Fida Himay! It’s good to meet you at last; I’ve heard a lot.”

Damian’s hand was seized and pumped vigorously.

“Let go of me, you giant buffoon,” Damian snapped, wrenching his hand away. “Where’s Grayson?”

The man shrugged off the rude treatment, gesturing behind him.

“Dick’s in there with the missus. It’s good you’re concerned for him; I don’t know what happened, but the poor kid’s pretty badly shaken up.”

Damian shoved past him, stepping inside.

It was the first time he’d been in anyone’s but the Graysons’ home. This one was far, far less cluttered; the walls were painted the color of saffron and sported a few framed pieces of Arabic calligraphy, while two rich red-and-gold prayer rugs rested in the middle of the living area, but that was about it for decoration. A small stack of children’s books rested on the table, and the air smelled richly of fresh bread and of meat with cinnamon and cardamom.

Dick was slumped over at the table, head on his arms, and sitting across from him, in her cargo pants and tank top, was none other than Noor al-Abbas.

“It’s okay kiddo,” she was saying gently. “Go ahead and cry. Let it all out.”

“Don’t encourage his weakness,” Damian told her. Her head snapped up, swiftly facing him. “Men shouldn’t cry.”

“Fida,” she greeted him. “Hey. You know crying is normal, right? And besides, it’s not his job to be a man yet. He’s not even nine.”

“Normal for women like you, maybe. So like I said, it’s weakness.”

That would’ve made Mary explode. Noor just raised an eyebrow, smirking, as unperturbed as always.

“Fida,” she said, “I boss around _lions_ and _tigers_. That’s my _job_. Do you _really_ think I’m weak?”

Damian opened his mouth, but no response came out.

The man — her husband, he realized — came over, resting a hand on Noor’s shoulder.

“You alright there, Dickie?” he asked.

“M’okay, Halim,” Dick mumbled into his arms. “Sorry t’bother you.”

“Asking for help doesn’t make you a bother, Dickie, any more than crying makes you weak. Never think that.”

 _This man has brain rot,_ Damian thought.

As if to confirm this, Noor looked up at her husband, resting her hand over his.

“Halim, is dinner almost ready?”

“Just about, _qalbi_. Just a few more minutes on the _maqluba_ , enough time for _asr_.”

“Oh, wow, perfect timing. _Shukran_ _laka_ ,” she told him, her shoulders lifting. Halim’s eyes crinkled.

Damian felt almost as much whiplash learning that Halim cooked for his wife — that man was truly out of his mind — as he did understanding everything that they were saying, finally surrounded by his mother tongue again. He even knew where the dish they’d mentioned was from.

“You’re Palestinian?” he blurted.

The couple looked at him. He inclined his head proudly, beaming, and she smiled with all her usual brightness.

“He is,” Noor confirmed. “I’m Syrian.”

Damian sucked in a long breath, an odd feeling coalescing in his chest. All of a sudden, he wondered which country his grandfather had been born in, that he might claim allegiance to a country as knowingly and proudly as the al-Abbas’s did.

 _Why would you want to claim allegiance to an ordinary people?_ he scoffed to himself. _You are an al Ghul. That transcends petty borders and these people’s common blood._

“I don’t know which country my family’s from,” he confessed.

Noor’s eyes opened a little more in surprise. Dick finally lifted his head, overcoming his hurt, at least for a moment, giving Damian a long, curious look.

“Well then, you can count yourself Palestinian and Syrian for the evening,” Halim decided brightly. “You can even join us in asr if you want.”

Damian took a step back, feeling a little shaken at the generosity.

“No. No, I’m not Muslim.”

“Ah. Don’t worry, we won’t hold that against you. Just ourselves to the rug.”

“Dear God.”

“That’s our line right now,” Halim chuckled, as he and his wife moved to the floor.

Then all joking stopped. The two stood on their respective prayer rugs, facing the same direction and moving their hands in synchronization, closing their eyes as they mouthed the words.

Another chill went through Damian. He moved to the table, sitting down next to Dick, taking uncharacteristic care to not make any noise or disturb them.

Both boys watched the adults, their faces still with concentration, breathing slow.

Standing. Bowing. Kneeling. Prostrating. The air hung silent as they prayed, all the while, their lips silently forming the words.

Time stretched on. A few minutes seemed like much longer before the al-Abbas’s opened their eyes, posture moving back to normal.

Damian swallowed hard.

“Well!” Halim said jovially, making Dick smile, even faintly. “You boys want dinner?”

“‘Course they do,” his wife replied. “And while you’re doing that, I’ll go wake up Malika.” She moved to go get their daughter while Halim bounded into the kitchen, humming under his breath.

Dick turned to Damian.

“People aren’t evil, Fida.” His statement was almost like a plea, so insistent that it made Damian sigh. An exasperated, cutting retort was on his lips, and probably would’ve escaped if he hadn’t just witnessed that prayer.

“I’m not going to argue with you any more about this. Let’s just have dinner.”

Dick nodded, wiping the last of the salt tracks from his cheeks.

The boys sat side by side once more, and Noor returned, placing Malika in Dick’s lap. She cooed; he buried his face in her soft baby curls while her parents served the _maqluba_ , accompanied by newly-baked rounds of bread.

He took a bite and nearly choked, the flavors instantly, intimately familiar; one of his grandfather’s cooks from his early childhood had been Palestinian. Halim’s cooking was as good as the al Ghuls’ kitchen servants, and for once, Damian offered generous thoughts to both those servants, and to this circus woman’s househusband.

“Passable,” he said dismissively.

“That’s all I’m looking for,” Halim decided, resting a hand on Dick’s shoulder while he picked at his dinner. Then: “Aren’t you gonna eat, kiddo?”

Dick sniffled once more.

“Sure, Halim. Th — thanks for looking out for me.”

“We do try,” Noor replied, leveling a careful look at Damian as she did.

As banally pedestrian as it was, Damian was grateful when they turned on the TV and played _Friends_ instead of the news. His grandfather would love hearing about Americans killing themselves, about the general human population being culled in conflict, but Damian had no interest in hearing more about the war or the terrorists.

Normality was boring, overrated. Most people were stupid, shallow, and cruel. Life needed to serve a higher purpose than itself.

But for that Wednesday evening, perhaps, Damian could just sit and eat in an ordinary fashion with this loving American family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Qalbi — my heart
> 
> Asr — Muslim afternoon prayer
> 
> Shukran laka — thank you
> 
> I also highly recommend looking up recipes for maqluba.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BIG warning ahead for hate crimes and violence of the homophobic sort. Also, my apologies for another long wait, these last few weeks before I go to school have been insane. Wish me luck for when I go back this Friday.

It rained the first night in Birmingham.

The sheets of cold water rattled down from the purple sky in almost unceasing intervals, only pausing to let the wind shake the ropes and fabric of the big top. The show had ended an hour previously, and Damian huddled in the trailer of the circus’s doctor, watching his wife and daughters fuss over Dick, watching John hold Mary’s hand as the doctor asked her a never-ending series of questions.

“How’s your nausea been since we last talked?” He seemed to be finally coming to the end of his interview, at least. “Better than it used to be? I remember, when you were having Dick, he had you over the toilet almost every day for the first three months.”

Damian made a face, hiding behind a back issue of _National Geographic_ that featured the Acropolis on the cover.

“No details about what was happening when she was having me, please, Kostos,” Dick called over from where Effie was trying to both comb his hair and shoo her daughters off to bed.

The big Greek man had a truly spectacular mustache, to the point of dominating his entire lower face, while his black hair was liberally freckled with gray. His skin was burnished bronze like Effie’s, Athena’s, and Aphrodite’s, and his eyes were so brown they were almost black. His brow also seemed to be permanently furrowed, even when he was smiling.

“ _Babas_ ,” Aphrodite chirped, “when will you be able to tell whether it’s a boy or a girl?”

“Twelve weeks,” her older sister muttered before their father could answer. “So its sex won’t be apparent for another week and a half.”

Damian set down _National Geographic_ , suddenly remembering something his grandfather had once told him.

_“When you were in the womb, Damian,” Ra’s said, having taken them out onto the balcony so they could talk in private, standing mightily over the little shivering six-year-old, their robes fluttering in the cold Tibetan mountain wind, “I knew you were destined for greatness. Yes...I knew even then, before you were born, that you would not be a disappointment like your mother, aunt, and uncle. Your mother and aunt Nyssa disappointed me right from the start by being born girls. Your uncle Dusan was born a boy, yes, but he disappointed me too, by being born an albino, a freak of nature. It is lucky that his only child is just a daughter, and a daughter with little talent at that, so that no heir of mine will carry his mother’s subpar DNA.”_

_Damian had heard this and felt smug, that_ he _had talent, that_ his _grandmother had not had subpar DNA, that_ he _was a_ boy _, and so_ he _, not his cousin Mara, would be their family’s heir, would carry on their grandfather’s great work._

_“When did you know?” he piped up. “That I was destined for greatness?”_

_Ra’s chuckled indulgently. Damian’s ego puffed itself up further; Grandfather was rarely indulgent, and never so with Mara._

_“I knew at once...when your mother told me she was pregnant. Because I knew who it was by, who had gotten you on her, and though he is my worst enemy, he is also truly one of the greatest men I have ever met. Your father is unsurpassed in his field, he stands toe-to-toe with gods without flinching, and he sired you on my daughter. My greatness and his within a single person...it will rattle the entire world.”_

_Damian all but glowed with pride._

_“So I snatched your mother back and kept her away from your father, so that he would not know about you at first, so his greatness may be fostered within you, but his naive morality may not influence you. My plan was infallible. But for the first few weeks, still I feared. What if you were a girl? Would I have to wait an entire generation more, until you had a son of your own, for my heir? But no. When those dreadful weeks passed and I finally found out your sex for the first time...” Ra’s’ eyes gleamed. “It became one of the proudest days of my life, surpassed only by the day you were born healthy and strong.”_

_The old man rested a hand on Damian’s shoulder, squeezing, the muscles under his robes rippling._

_“That is why I accept no weakness from you Damian, no softness, no hesitation. You will have all the power and skill of your father, and none of his fallacies. You will understand that we will rule the world, that is because we are superior, that none but we can cull and control this mass of rabble._ Nothing _must stand in the way of you and your destiny.”_

_Damian nodded, saying nothing about the cold, the wind, the miserable aches on his small body from his earlier training. He understood. It was part of everything he must know, must endure, all that was set in the stars for him._

_His destiny._

“I want a brother,” Dick interrupted, startling Damian out of his memory. “Is it a brother?”

“I have no idea, as we have no ultrasound,” Kostos rumbled. “You, child, will simply have to wait until it is born.”

The boy pouted.

“Why do you want a brother?” Athena asked. “What’s wrong with a sister?”

Aphrodite nodded eagerly.

“What isn’t wrong with a sister?” Effie sighed. “I have five of them. Horrible, fat, gossipy hens, every one. I pity my daughters. You Graysons are so lucky; if only I had had boys.”

“Mom, Ro and I like each other,” Athena tried to say, but her mother’s sighing cut her off.

Damian tried to picture this studious, serious girl, who reminded him strongly of the male tutors from his childhood, and this feminine, indulgent girl, who was basically everything the female assassins in the League were not allowed to be, getting along, and his imagination failed him.

“Nothing’s wrong with a sister,” Dick said, “I’d like a sister too. But I’ve always wanted a little brother.”

“Well, we’re sorry to make you wait, _čhavo_ ,” John told his son while Mary pulled her shirt back down, getting to her feet. “But don’t worry, come this fall, you’ll definitely have one or the other.”

Dick beamed.

Damian abruptly got to his feet.

“I’m going for a walk,” he muttered, and, not waiting for a reply, grabbed John’s umbrella and stalked out of the trailer into the rain.

 

* * *

 

It was past one in the morning by the time Damian found himself standing on the rainy streets of Birmingham. The city was alight with pink and purple, glowing like a jeweled flower in the darkness and the omnipresent sheen of water. Hundreds of thousands of souls, breathing and moving and going through the meaningless motions of their insignificant little lives.

Damian glared at the sidewalk, glad there was no one else from the circus around.

No sooner had he thought that did he look up — and recognize one of the cars parked nearby.

He ran forward, taking in the make, model, the chipped silver paint, and the Mississippi license plate, knowing whose it was at once. There were only a handful of people from their circus who owned a car. And only one of them was from Mississippi.

This was Willow Windsor’s car.

Damian stared. Willow had gone to bed almost immediately following the show. What was her car doing out here in downtown Birmingham in the middle of the night?

He promptly crouched down on a sidewalk bench, waiting for answers.

He barely had to wait five minutes.

Across the street, a neon sign flickered lime green, proclaiming it to be _The Two Scissors Club_ , while above the words, a pair of peony-colored scissors blinked open and shut and hummed with light. A young man waited outside the door, his face shadowed, effectively hidden by the darkness. As Damian watched, the front doors to the club suddenly burst open, and from them emerged Hazel Windsor. She still wore her makeup from the show along with a short red dress and matching heels, a gold-colored umbrella in her hand, her face shining with joy and her long black hair swinging free around her shoulders.

Damian wondered what she thought she was doing.

Then from the doors emerged Rose Lovelace.

The aerialist looked even brighter and happier than she usually did. Her dress was violet instead of her usual pink, and her blonde tresses were tied up in a braided crown. She wore silver hoop earrings, and when she took Hazel’s hand, she blushed deeply, her porcelain cheeks the color of cherry blossoms.

The man by the door started to say something, possibly to get the women’s attention, but a passing car drowned him out. Neither of them noticed.

“I could do that every night,” Hazel said breathlessly, her dark eyes crinkling. “Dancing like that with you...”

“Night’s not over yet.” Rose moved under the umbrella; the two women almost nose-to-nose, the falling water parting around their protected bodies. “Wanna go back to my trailer...” Her voice dropped to a seductive murmur; Damian had to strain to hear the last part, “...and round it all off?”

“Always, Rosie. Just gonna have to be careful not to wake anybody up. Those trailers got walls like rice paper.”

Rose smiled, then sighed.

“I hate having to sneak around.”

“I know, I know it’s been over a year, but...” Hazel sighed too. “I’m still not ready to tell my sister yet. You know that. I’m sorry darlin’, but —”

“Don’t apologize,” Rose breathed. “I ain’t angry. I’d sneak around for the rest of my life if I could still be with you.”

“Rosie...”

Damian stared as Rose took Hazel’s face in hand and kissed her. Silhouetted by the rain and the multicolored neon light, the two women seemed to form one shape, the water arching around them, the old city merely a backdrop to their love.

But no cars were passing by when the man shouted out again.

“Rose...Rose... _ROSE!_ ”

The women broke apart at once; even from across the street, Damian saw the shock on their faces.

And the fear.

“Davis...I...I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“You’re my friend,” Davis replied. He was blond like Rose, big and stocky and ruddy-faced. His accent was even thicker than either of theirs. His hands were clenched into fists. “And I fuckin’ _live_ here. I was waitin’ at the station for you, Rose, waitin’ for us to meet up like we always do when you’re in town.”

“Davis, I’m sorry.” Rose edged backwards slightly. “I didn’t see you there. I forgot. I promise I’ll make it up to you —”

“So I followed you and this one. Followed you way out here. And I gotta ask you, Rose. What in the _fucking hell_ d’you think you’re playin’ at!?”

Both women flinched. Davis marched up and pointed square into Hazel’s face, towering over her even in her heels.

“What the _hell_ are you doin’, kissin’ _her?_ ” Unbelievable disgust and vitriol was poured into a single word. “ _How_ can you possibly _do_ that?”

Hazel trembled in terror. Rose took a deep breath, trying to look up at her friend.

“Davis...I...I...we love each other.”

“ _Love?_ ” Davis almost shouted it. “They don’t love like normal folks, Rose. Wolves with sheep, that’s them with innocent unsuspectin’ girls. You don’t wanna go back to your parents after they kicked you out onto the streets, fine, I don’t blame y’all, you were just a kid just experimentin’ with some broad. Y’all didn’t deserve to be punished like that for bein’ a stupid unknowin’ kid. You wanna join the circus, hang out with freaks, fine, I can handle that. I stood by ya for all that. But you ain’t a kid anymore! You’re a grown woman! You know what’s right and what ain’t! You know better than to be screwin’ around with the likes of this bitch!” He spat at Hazel’s feet.

But even though he did, even though she was trembling, Hazel spoke up. Her voice was quiet, and it shook, but she spoke.

“She’s not screwing around, Davis. Neither of us are. We love each other. And who we are isn’t going to change just because you don’t like it.”

Davis was silent for a moment.

Then he backhanded Hazel across the cheek.

She stumbled, her umbrella spiraling into the storm drain. He raised his hand again.

“Davis, no!” Rose leapt in between her lover and her former friend, lifting her hands in a plea. “Don’t! Don’t hurt her! It ain’t _her_ you’re mad at, it’s _me!_ ”

Davis proved her right; he didn’t waste a second before he punched her in the face. Rose tripped, her tall heels twisting her ankle so that she fell backwards onto the rainy sidewalk. Davis hit her twice more in the face, kicking her viciously in the ribs, punching her in the stomach, up against her diaphragm, making her choke, stepping forward onto her face, his boot making her nose _crunch_.

“ _NO!_ ”

Hazel’s scream reverberated across the streets. She tried to grab Davis’s arm, tried to pull him off Rose, to no avail, shrieking and wailing hysterically, like a vixen with her paw in a trap, like a she-cat whose kittens were about to be drowned.

“If I gotta teach ya a physical lesson to keep ya away from lesbians, Rose, I will,” Davis growled at the prone woman below him. “If I gotta go to the _extreme_ to make ya forget girls —”

Damian didn’t remember crossing the street. He didn’t remember having wrenched a loose board from his bench. All he knew was that all of a sudden, he was pointing the jagged board in Davis’s face.

Hazel stopped screaming. Her makeup ruined and streaked with tears, she stared.

“You have two seconds to leave.” Damian’s voice was cold. “And to never bother these women again.”

Davis was too astonished to speak for a moment.

Then he laughed.

“Really?” he sneered at Hazel. “Ya can’t fight me like a man, so you get a little boy to do it?” He spat on the ground again. “Get outta here, little boy. She wanna act like she did when she was a stupid girl, she gonna be punished like a stupid girl. She wanna fuck girls like a man, she gonna take a beating like a man.”

“A real man proves himself against a stronger opponent, as I did many times over, not one that can’t fight back.” Damian’s hands and gaze didn’t waver. “I do believe in crushing one’s enemies, but there’s no glory or proof of power in doing that to ones that can’t even defend themselves."

Davis laughed at him again, low and mocking.

“Who do y’all think you are? Go home little boy, stop playin’ at bein’ a man.”

Damian’s shoulders tightened. He bared his teeth like an animal.

“‘Little boy,’” he echoed. “You try to insult me, while you are no more than scum. I am already more of a man than you’ll ever be, you sewer-dwelling castrato.”

Davis’s smile vanished, and he lunged.

Damian’s board caught him across the jaw.

Davis hit the ground, but Damian didn’t stop. He struck again, and again, hitting every weak point in the human body he’d been taught, sparing no strength.

Davis wailed and wept pathetically, but Damian didn’t stop.

“You attack defenseless women like a coward.” Whack. “You lack courage. You lack honor.” Whack. Whack. “You got your ass kicked by an eleven-year-old, a ‘little boy,’” he mocked, striking his board against Davis’s knees, breaking one of them. “How much of a man are you now? _You_ certainly can’t take a beating like one.”

“Please...” Davis moaned. “Please stop.”

Damian threw his board aside. Then he braced his own foot on Davis’s nose, pressing slightly.

“Beg me for mercy first, you son of a bitch,” he hissed.

The big man cowered.

“Please. Please. Please have mercy.”

Smiling nastily, Damian left his foot there for a few more seconds.

Then he backed away.

“Begone. I never want Rose Lovelace or Hazel Windsor to have to lay eyes on you ever again.”

Davis stumbled away, running as fast as he could until he disappeared into the rain.

Panting, Damian turned. Next to him, Hazel was trying to pull a moaning Rose up, hoisting her arm over her shoulders. The rain was soaking through their dresses and washing away the last of their makeup; Hazel’s normally sleek hair was frizzing, slowly turning back to its natural curls, while Rose’s nose looked almost crushed, a mess of blood, the dark red liquid trickling down over her mouth, dripping down with the water.

Rose struggled to stay upright, and Hazel struggled to hold her, staring at Damian.

“Fida...where did you learn to do that?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know...anyone who could fight that well, that efficiently. That...brutally. And like you said, you’re just eleven years old.”

For some reason, he suddenly felt exposed.

“I wouldn’t expect you to know anything about fighting,” he muttered. “Those were just basic moves. Anyone could do them. A toddler could do them; I know because I did.”

Not allowing her to reply, he moved closer, lifting Rose’s chin and examining her face, feeling her side and lower chest.

“Nose obviously broken. Two of her teeth appear to be chipped too, and another loose. At least three ribs cracked...I’d wager some rather severe bruising too. Nothing she can’t walk off.”

“Are you kidding?” Hazel burst out. Tears began swimming in her eyes. It was all so odd, coming from a woman who was normally so quiet and relaxed. “We need to take her back to Kostos right now.”

“Woman, calm yourself —”

“Fida, please.” Her voice cracked painfully. Her tears ran down her face, mixing with the rain. “Help me get her into the car.”

He sighed, irritated.

But he still wrapped Rose’s other arm around his own shoulders, the two of them carrying her over, laying her down on the backseat, setting the umbrellas on the floor beneath her. Her blonde hair had come loose again, matted and wet with dirty water. An earring had been torn out. One hand clutched her injured ribs.

“Stop that, you fool,” Damian chided sharply. “You may only hurt yourself worse.”

“Fida.” Her voice was raspy and painful. “I don’t know what you were doing out here, but...thank you. You saved me.”

That drew him up short. For several seconds, he had nothing to say.

“Don’t whine or cry while we drive back. It’s annoying.”

He slammed the door, climbing into the passenger’s seat, ignoring the surge of emotion that had arisen in his chest.

Rainwater dripped down their clothes, ruining the car seat, but none of them noticed.

 

* * *

 

They woke up the entire family when they burst into the Kostos trailer, but nonetheless, the four of them were on their feet and alert impressively fast when they saw Rose.

“Effie,” Kostos said sharply, turning to his fuzzy-pink-bathrobe-clad wife, “Go get Willow and Mary.”

Effie for once said nothing, just grabbed John’s umbrella from Damian’s hands and ran out the door.

“Girls, go get my kit.”

Athena and Aphrodite ran too.

Kostos, in his plaid pajamas and all, spread a tarp out on the floor and helped Rose lie down over it.

“What happened? How bad is it?”

Hazel, still crying, laid out what had happened, while Damian rigidly listed the injuries he’d observed.

Kostos sighed deeply.

“I was afraid this would happen.”

“Hey, don’t worry about me,” Rose croaked, trying to smile and wincing. “I was homeless for four years, remember? I’ve gotten my ass kicked worse than this before.”

“It’s not like you build up an immunity to getting your ass kicked,” said Athena dryly as she and her sister returned with their father’s medical supplies.

“ _Babas_ , will she be okay?” Aphrodite asked, her voice tight with anxiety.

“Eventually.” Kostos rolled on a pair of rubber cleaning gloves. “But she will not be able to perform for six weeks until her ribs heal.”

“ _Six weeks?_ ” Rose exclaimed, horrified. “Six weeks, I can’t — I can’t not perform.”

“You can and you will,” Kostos told her sharply. “Now hush. We will take care of your face and ice your ribs.”

Hazel sat beside her lover, clutching Rose’s hand like a lifeline. The doctor’s daughters knelt down too, and Damian watched in surprise as the two teenage girls, one in sweatpants and a ragged NASA t-shirt and the other in pajamas printed with rabbits, worked in tandem with their father, cleaning away blood and checking for any more fractures and holding the ice packs steady to Rose’s chest while he measured out pain medication.

“We’re both going to be doctors too,” Aphrodite explained to Damian, accurately reading his expression. “Well, _she’s_ going to be like _Babas_. I’m going to be a therapist. Different kind of doctor.”

“ _Louloudi mou_ , for the last time, therapists are not doctors,” Kostos grumbled. “I support you, but it is a soft science. Everyone knows this.”

Both girls rolled their eyes at their father.

It was then that the door burst open once more. From the doorway, Willow elbowed her way past Effie and Mary and ran to her younger sister, splattering water all over the tarp.

“Hazel,” she cried out, grabbing her by the face, “Are you alright? Are y’all okay? Effie said you were involved in an attack —”

“I’m fine, Will,” Hazel said quietly, taking her older sister by the wrist. “Worry about Rose, not me. She confronted him, he attacked her.”

“I have no regrets,” Rose coughed, “It’s better that it was me than you. People need you, Hazel. Your parents and sister would miss you if you died. _My_ parents would probably throw a party. Nobody needs me.”

Hazel looked shocked. Then she almost knocked Athena out of the way to cup Rose’s face, eyes filling with tears again.

“ _I_ do. _I_ need you.”

Effie and Mary exchanged glances, and so did the Kostos daughters. Their father just nodded.

Willow looked back and forth between her sister and Rose, at the charged look they were sharing, and understanding emerged on her face.

“Haze,” she said quietly, “why didn’t you tell me?”

“I wasn’t ready.” Hazel didn’t look at her at first, shoulders tightening. “And I thought...you might be upset. Might worry.”

Willow took a deep breath.

“Of course I’ll worry. You’re my little sister. I worry every time we get on a horse, and you’ve been riding your entire life. I worried because we’re black, and you’re right, now I’ll worry because you’re gay. Because _this exact thing_ and worse happens to innocent people, and if Fida hadn’t been there...”

She grabbed Hazel, pulling her forward, and wrapped her up in a hug. Hazel stiffened again in surprise.

“But I’m not upset. I’ll never be upset. I love you so much, Hazel.”

Hazel choked, and she began to cry again, hugging Willow right back.

Damian looked at the sisters, still wrapped up in their embrace, and then he spoke quietly to Rose.

“So that’s why your parents expelled you. Because you’re a lesbian.”

Rose shrugged faintly.

“Some folks’ love ain’t unconditional, Fida.” She looked over at Hazel, at where Willow was holding her sister close, like she never wanted to let her go. “But luckily, some folks’ love _is_.”

Athena and Aphrodite looked at each other. Aphrodite smiled faintly, and her older sister nodded in agreement.

Damian’s chest felt like it’d been twisted up into knots.

“Look. Y’all should go with Mary,” Rose told him. “You need some sleep after the ass-kicking you gave Davis.”

He nodded tightly, getting to his feet.

Effie walked back inside, leaving Mary standing in the doorway alone, her husband’s umbrella in hand. She’d thrown on a denim jacket over her cotton nightgown, her hair looking even more wild than usual, watching him carefully.

They walked to the Graysons’ trailer in silence, until she finally spoke.

“What did Willow mean by ‘if Fida hadn’t been there’? And what did Rose mean by 'the ass-kicking you gave Davis'?”

Damian scowled at the muddy ground.

“I...I beat up the man that was attacking Rose.”

Mary drew up short, staring in horror.

“You deliberately went after a man who’d already proven to be unreasonable and violent?”

“So what? He wasn’t so tough. I beat him, didn’t I?”

“Fida, I don’t want you putting yourself at risk like that. If that happens again —”

“If that happens again, and I run away, the attacker’ll just finish what they started,” Damian snapped. “If I hadn’t done something, I imagine he would’ve killed or raped her, and most likely Hazel too. I don’t know what you’re asking me to do, woman, but I know you and your family are not ones to just sit by and do nothing...”

He trailed off, wondering where this was coming from. True, that Davis was slime, but...he was talking like he _cared_ about these people. First his overreaction to Shanti’s illness, now this...

Mary sighed.

“You’re right.”

He stared.

“I am? I mean, of course I am. You _admitted_ that I am?”

“I _wouldn’t_ want anyone in my family to just sit by and do nothing. And if _I’d_ been there, I probably would’ve leapt at that man with my bare hands.”

He could imagine it.

“You need not worry about my getting hurt,” he added. “I can fight better than anyone here.”

Her tired expression became one of concern again. He bristled.

“Don’t look at me like that. My learning to fight, to be tough, to be strong, was of paramount importance. And it saved those women, didn’t it?”

“To what extent did you learn to fight, Fida? How old were you when you started?”

Damian yanked away from her outstretched hand.

“Don’t question his decision to train me! He _did_ make me tough and strong, he made me who I am! He’s a great man, he’s wise beyond anything you’ll ever know, he knows what I and our family need better than you ever will!”

Mary pulled her hand away. Her brow furrowed.

“Who, Fida? Your father?”

“What? No. My grandfather.”

“Oh.”

The word was quiet, but he heard the undercurrent of anger in it. Her blue eyes darkened, her brow became like thunder; the rain drumming down over the umbrella accentuating the stiffness of her shoulders, the tightness of her mouth.

“I see.” The anger still rippled through her tone. “I see why you left home.”

“What? Don’t be ridiculous.” Damian turned his back on her, glowering. “I wouldn’t have left my home if I’d had a choice. My mother, I...I am everything to my grandfather.”

“What did your mother think?”

“Mother was raised by Grandfather too. She should know he’s right, what’s important — she was wrong to ever question him, right to obey.” He refused to look at her. For some reason, his eyes felt hot, prickly. “And I want to hear nothing about any of it from _you_ , circus freak. Grandfather earned my respect a thousand times over. You have yet to earn mine, if that’s even possible.”

He expected her to yell at him, even to slap him or worse, for insulting her. Instead, she took a long, steadying breath.

“Go to bed, Fida. It’s late.”

He whipped back around.

“What’s _wrong_ with you?” he shouted. “I just called you a circus freak. Are you going to take that?”

“ _Go to bed_ , Fida.” The rain cascaded down around her feet. “Rose is right. You need your rest.”

“Damn you.”

Damian threw open the door and stormed inside, the furious sound of the rain cutting off as the trailer door snapped shut behind them. He practically ran from Mary and her questions and concern, kicking off his shoes and rattling his cot when he climbed onto it.

Next to him, Dick stirred fitfully in his sleep.

Damian pulled the covers over his head, and slipped quickly into nightmares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> babas -- dad
> 
> louloudi mou -- my flower


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mind the tags with this one, guys, and an extra warning for gore and body horror on top of that. Also, I borrowed scenes and some of the dialogue from Teen Titans #3 and Final Crisis #6.

_The dreams were rooted in the truth. In memories._

_At first, he was dueling his cousin Mara, the reflection of what he could’ve been if his genetics had not been superior. The poor freak was unlucky enough to be the daughter of an albino, unlucky further in that she was born a girl. Compared to his, her thrusts were sloppy, her parrying inefficient, even though their grandfather had been training her since she was old enough to clench a fist. Her dark hair frizzed around her chubby face like Medusa’s, and her brown eyes were bulging with rage._

_“I’ll show you, Damian,” she yelled, her sword clashing against his, “You are_ not _better than me! You’re not! You’re not!”_

_It sounded childish. It was. She was only six. He was far older and more mature; he was seven._

_“Aren’t I?” Damian jeered. “You’re just Grandfather’s attack dog. I am his_ heir _. You want leadership? You want power? Come take it.”_

_She lashed out at him; he deflected her blows. She lunged for victory, for the power she craved in lieu of autonomy, and he struck her away at every turn._

_“How many times do I have to humiliate you, Mara, before you realize I’m incapable of losing?”_

_Her eyes were full of hatred. He wondered smugly if she would cry._

_“It must be difficult for you, knowing you have a history of_ failure _.”_

_It was over swiftly. He snapped her sword underfoot, then turned and bowed to their grandfather from where he was watching proudly, basking in his victory._

_Then Mara threw her knife while his back was turned._

_Coward._

_He caught it, whipping it back around --_

_\-- her screams echoed through the chamber._

_For the knife had sliced over her eye._

_Now only one was full of hatred, for the other was oozing red, flooding her socket even through the hand she’d clamped over it. She doubled over, remaining silent as Damian stood over her. Even through her pain, his cousin could never weep tears, it would make her weak, even more contemptible. So instead, she wept blood._

_Mara’s face shifted. Suddenly, she was ten to his eleven instead of six to his seven; her hair was longer, she bore more calluses and more weapons, the scar over her eye was now a thin slit, the eye itself, that blank, dead eye, was puffy white like corpse flesh, the iris red as an infection._

_“Call me weak?” she jeered. “You were given_ everything _, Damian. Everything! And you’re turning your back on it! Listen well, little bird. Little_ Robin _. I may have Dusan’s weaknesses, but you have Talia’s, sure as hell. She never could resist those winged pests, your father and those useless brats he calls family. Ask yourself, ask them: where does being good get you? Dead! Every time, it gets you dead! Just look at your father, little bird! Look at that corpse what sired you!”_

_Mara laughed cruelly, then her laughs turned back to screams as rotting hands wrapped in bandages, green with slime and glowing Lazarus water, green as acid, green as radiation, grasped her, seizing her waist, covering her neck. Her own hands stretched out for help, but the rotting ones dragged her away; through it, her living eye kept refusing to weep, while her dead eye kept weeping blood._

_Mara vanished, and instead, Damian was struck by the sight of his father. His father, his magnificent father, who his mother had sung the praises of his whole life, proud and triumphant, standing over a dying Darkseid. Batman, the great warrior, the protector of all, the symbol splayed proudly across his chest, his ragged cape fluttering out behind him._

_“Hh. Gotcha.”_

_The words had been barely out of his mouth when the Omega beams caught Batman in the chest, in the head. Before his eyes, his father, his proud, strong father, wasted away, withering into a corpse, his body desiccating until he was barely more than bones, until only the barest muscles and tendons were pulled tight over a grinning skeletal mouth, his empty eye sockets smoking, as dead as Mara’s. He fell to the ground next to his fallen foe, his uniform in tatters, his bones clattering in the bare confines of what was left of him._

_As his father fell, Damian abruptly saw his mother get struck to her knees._

_“You disappoint me, Talia,” Ra’s snarled._

_Talia wiped the blood from her mouth; she’d bitten her cheek so hard the fragile skin had torn._

_“I’m only continuing his classical education, Father.”_

_Damian unconsciously moved to stand in front of his paintings. He didn’t understand_ why _; it had, after all, seemed like a good idea to get a grounding in_ everything _, including art. But he knew that it’d upset Grandfather somehow._

 _“You have him painting pretty pictures when I ordered both of you to leave for Cairo hours ago! You deliberately delayed a time-sensitive mission, costing me money, time, and men! You are my daughter! You are the mother of my heir! How_ dare _you undermine me!”_

_Ra’s stalked over to Damian, violently yanking him aside to study his paintings._

_“Well. It wasn’t even worth it, either.”_

_Damian had spent all day on his ink-and-watercolors, and he was very proud of how they’d turned out. One was of the mountain ranges in Tibet, one was a seascape of the coast off Infinity Island, one was a quick study of his own small hands, another was a sketch of the prize tigers, and the last one, his magnum opus in his six-year-old eyes, was a portrait of his mother. A little wobbly maybe, a little lacking in technical skill, but his young self really thought that he’d captured her grace and beauty._

_He’d kept sneaking glances over at her as they sat on the cliff together, looking out at the endless sky while she’d quietly read her book and he’d painted, eager to please her._

_When he’d showed her his paintings, mere minutes before his grandfather had showed up, Talia had smiled at him._

_“You’ve got real skill,_ habibi _. You’re a better artist than a lot of adults.”_

_“I know, Mother,” he’d replied airily, but inside he was glowing._

_In that moment, expectations and responsibilities left both their shoulders. Right then, it was just him, her, his easel, her collection of Rumi’s poetry, and a picnic of mango juice, wine, bread, and_ jalamah _. No servants, no League, nobody. It had been a good day._

_She’d just been running her finger lovingly over the lines of her portrait when her father had struck her to the ground. The portrait had spiraled from her fingers to the earth, just like her._

_In the meantime, Damian did his best to stand his ground against the man he admired most._

_“You want me to be the best, Grandfather,” he challenged. “Should I not be the best at everything? Should I not train hard at everything?”_

_“What you_ should _do, boy, is obey me.”_

 _Damian felt the blow to his chest, and heard the_ shink _of steel emerging from its sheath. From the ground, he watched in horror as his grandfather slashed each of his paintings down the middle, then began slicing them to pieces. As he’d had, he’d stepped on the portrait, muddying and ruining the image of his daughter._

_Damian longed to protest, to cry out, but he knew if he did he’d only be punished worse._

_“Father, no!” Talia cried, rushing in front of Ra’s. “This was_ my _doing. Punish me, not him.”_

_Ra’s kicked up the palettes and paint water. Damian had used it last to rinse the brush that had colored his mother’s cheeks and lips, so red water splashed over Talia, soaking and staining her white dress._

_He then hit his daughter so hard Damian almost felt the dislocation of her shoulder himself._

_“How many times do you have to disappoint me, Talia, before you realize I must be obeyed?”_

_He struck her in the face again, so hard her head snapped all the way to the side._

_“It must be difficult for you, knowing you have a history of_ failure _.”_

_Talia fell to her knees, her son watching, soaking the scene in like paper soaked up paint. Ra’s stood over her, his rage impossible to deny._

_“I hope you relish taking his punishment. This is what you get when you are weak, when you protect and care for others.”_

_The paint water on Talia’s dress suddenly became thicker, darker. The viscous wine-colored liquid seemed to pour off her body, soaking through the fabric and staining her brown hands red. As Damian reached out towards his mother, he saw that the blood was on his hands as well, dripping down pudgy fingers, soaking into the earth below._

_Then he saw his mother on her feet again, not on the cliff, but in her lavish quarters, standing next to another woman. Damian thought nothing of that at first; she was often accompanied by her handmaids. She was still in red, blood red, it was now the color of her silk dress; her satiny hair, the color of black coffee, was in the hands of her companion, and a fine silver-backed brush was running through it. This companion, this other woman, was in a sky-blue silk dress; her wild hair fell in ebony curls down her back. Talia’s hands and arms were bedecked with elaborate, lush henna patterns. Her companion’s arms were bedecked with gold bracelets engraved with birds in flight. Both were curvaceous and muscular, with strong, calloused hands._

_But he saw Talia’s face in the mirror, saw the purple bruises on her green eyes and elegant cheekbones, saw how she was not crying even as she applied her makeup with shaking hands, and he could not see the other woman’s face._

_“You are weak,” Talia was saying dismissively to her companion, her words cold. “You are dead, you are buried, you are nothing but crushed bones. You were defeated by a mediocre, two-bit criminal. I have survived a thousand enemies, I have killed many, and I have lived with my father, the greatest triumph of all. My family and I are the enemies of death itself. You..._ you _can’t claim that. You couldn’t even survive to see your son grow. You left him. You abandoned him.” She outlined her eyes in kohl, like an Egyptian goddess, and with the same kind of ferocity, grabbed her companion by the wrist. “What kind of mother_ are _you?”_

_The silver-backed brush clattered to the floor. Damian heard himself gasp._

_The other woman was Mary Grayson, her gaze narrowed in anger. Green eyes glared into blue._

_Then the women’s images flickered, and Damian saw himself in his Robin suit, grasping nine-year-old Dick Grayson in his own uniform by the wrist. Different people. But the two sets of eyes were exactly the same._

_Their mothers returned. Damian had to clap his hand over his mouth to stifle the noise that came out._

_For Talia was now covered in a thousand bruises from an angry hand, a thousand sword cuts bled on her body. The marks of dozens of whippings rose on her shoulders and back in angry weals. Burn marks and rope chafes from being imprisoned by enemies had risen on her arms. Her red dress absorbed all the blood, but her beautiful hair dripped slimily with radioactive Lazarus water. Her eyes sunken with exhaustion. There was a hole over her heart, where her own sister had stabbed her, and Damian saw into his own mother’s chest._

_And Mary…_

_Mary’s body had been crushed by impact. Her shattered bones poked from her broken skin, her ribs tearing outwards through her pretty blue dress, her form bent and sunken at odd angles. Her flesh was a flattened, pulverized mess of blood, and her head tilted at an angle as though she’d been hanged. Her head like a melon that’d been hit by a sledgehammer, the back of her skull crushed, the bone broken through her face, the back of her long curls splattered with fluid and brains. Her face was barely recognizable._

_Damian knew at once that this was the last image Dick had ever had of his mother._

_“We’re only human, Talia,” Mary replied. “You and me. Mothers and all.”_

_Blood pooled on the expensive carpet._

_When Damian dared look up again, instead of their mothers, he saw Dick Grayson standing before him again. At first, he was the child he was at present, sobbing like his heart was breaking, then he grew up before Damian’s eyes into the man that he knew, the bat splayed over his heart like a warning and a target all at once. He looked right into Damian’s eyes, and he saw that the tear tracks were barely dry on this grown man’s cheeks._

_“People are good, Damian,” he said softly. “This is not the norm. You don’t have to settle for worse.”_

_Damian saw that even through the armor, Dick was bleeding too. A thousand cuts, it seemed, a thousand cuts on his body from a thousand enemies and yet it had not meant death._

_Yet._

_Dick smiled, and the light flickered, so that Damian could see the skeleton through the skin, held back by something so fragile, so little keeping Dick from being just like Bruce._

_“You are safe with me, Damian. You are safe.”_

_The high-pitched, shrieking laughter of a demon echoed, louder and louder, and Damian’s vision was swallowed up by green light._

 

* * *

 

Damian woke up with a start, almost falling off the cot. _Harry Potter_ was lying on its side on the floor, and morning light was filtering through the open windows. The bed opposite his was empty; Dick had left behind just a flattened pillow and rumpled blankets. A breeze ruffled through, and his Superman poster fluttered slightly against its tape bindings.

Shaking slightly, and cursing himself for it, Damian washed up under the creaky, rusted showerhead and got dressed. He double-checked the plastic bag under his bed, looking at his Robin suit, at the utility belt and scabbard that lay on top. 

 _Three more weeks,_ he told himself. _You’ve already survived one here. You have endured much worse. This too shall pass._

He was still for a moment. Then a strange urge came over him, a longing of sorts. 

He put the bag back under the bed, picking up _Harry Potter_ and resting it on his pillow. Then he moved into the main living area, rifling around through John’s and Mary’s belongings, moving stacks of books to see if he could find --

Sure enough, he uncovered a large half-full notebook. Opening it up, he saw that it was a long series of the family’s financial records, their income carefully budgeted against what they were spending and saving. Damian looked at their salary, and nearly dropped the book; it was an _outrage_ that the star attractions of the show were getting paid a relative pittance. Did Haly really not have the money to pay them what they were worth?

Maybe he didn’t. Maybe this was the best he could do. And maybe the rest of the performers and attractions had even less money to spare. 

Damian shook his head and ripped a handful of blank pages out of the back of the book. He rifled around some more and found a pencil, went into the kitchen, measured out coffee ground and water into the pot, and sat down at the dining table. 

But barely had he set the pencil to the paper when he realized that he could hear low voices from John’s and Mary’s room.

“-- I’m worried about Fida,” Mary was saying. 

“Well yeah, any kid that knows how to fight like Jackie Chan can’t have had an easy upbringing. Who forces a little kid to do that? It’s so fucked up.”

“You’re right. Last night, when I asked him about it, he told me that he was ‘trained’ by his grandfather to a harsh extent...John, he all but _admitted_ to me that he was abused.”

Damian’s entire body froze up. 

Abused? _This_ again?

“His grandfather? What about his parents?”

“I don’t think his father had much of a hand in his upbringing. And his mother...it seems like she was a victim of his grandfather just as much as he was.”

“Saint Sarah protect us. That poor kid. And his poor mother.”

His hand tightened on the pencil.

They sounded just like their son. Did these people really see his upbringing as so terrible?

“I don’t know what to do,” Mary sighed miserably. “I mean, God knows we have our fair share of people here who’ve been abused by their family members, but Fida’s so different. His circumstances seem so...enhanced. A special kind of abuse. I wish I knew what to do --”

“ _M_ _iri_ _ćerxai_ , the only thing you _can_ do is exactly what you said we should do in the first place. Give him a safe place to live, a roof over his head, guaranteed meals, and kindness and support. A place where he doesn’t have to go through what he apparently went through with his family. I think the rest he’s going to have to figure out for himself. But we, our family, can be here to support him when he does.”

Damian had heard enough. He didn’t even bother brewing the coffee, just swept up his papers and pencil and all but ran out of the trailer. 

The rain had left their campground and field covered in a thin sheen of water. The sky had blued again, but it was still too early in the morning for the rain to have evaporated, and everything was unusually quiet. The majority of the circus folk seemed to be getting in a little extra sleep, since they didn’t have to leave for Georgia until the next day. 

Damian swiftly found the animals. He stacked boxes of feed up outside one of the ring, and sat down on them, setting his papers down on the broad concrete itself. 

The lions within were asleep too. Jefferson was stretched out on his side, and the three lionesses had curled up in a small bunch together, their cubs snuggled into their sides. Baby Wanda yawned in her sleep, exposing her teeth, which were barely bigger than needles. 

Damian set pencil to paper again, carefully sketching the lions. They were so still and peaceful; the only motion was their sides rising and falling with their breath. 

Uninterrupted, he didn’t know how long he sat there, crouched over on the box of horse feed, but when he pulled away, through the cheap lined notebook paper he saw some halfway decent drawings.

He smoothed out the paper and observed his own pencil strokes. He had done well, he decided. He’d captured Lorelei’s piercing gaze from memory, as well as the ever-present motion of the cubs. The sloping lines of their backs, their huge paws, their massive teeth. He looked at his subjects again, and observing them, he felt a sense of aesthetic appreciation. 

 _This isn’t frivolous,_ he told himself. _I’m honing my -- rather considerable -- skill. And these beasts make excellent practice subjects._

Baby Franklin rolled over, exposing his tiny belly. Vanessa’s ear twitched slightly, as did Maeve’s tail. 

 _Though, that being said...it_ is _pleasant to simply be around them._

These uncomplicated creatures seemed to be helping calm his turbulent mind. They existed to hunt, eat, sleep, mate, and protect, and that was all; there was nothing duplicitous about them. Their state of simple being made his nightmares feel less substantial.

 _Don’t forget that these are ferocious beasts,_ hissed the voice in his head that sounded a lot like his grandfather. _Haven’t you seen lions rip enemies to shreds, feasting on their flesh and blood?_

It was true, he could not forget that. But sitting before the lions, he thought to himself that these were not monsters. They were only animals, as much as he was only human. 

 _You are_ not _only human. You are different from the rabble! You are an al Ghul! You are better! You are_ more _!_

Damian sighed and shook his head. 

Being an al Ghul was an honor, yes. But sometimes...it seemed like a burden too. 

Something occurred to him. He set pencil to paper again, and from memory, with a few strokes, the head of an elephant manifested under his touch. Zitka, Dick’s favorite. He was pleased to see that he had captured the inquisitive calm of her gaze, those dark eyes peering out from behind the wrinkles, the way she invitingly stretched out her trunk to the viewer. Everything about her that Dick loved.

He set his pencil down. 

Moments later, he heard the tread of small, light footsteps on the grass behind him; he turned. 

Sure enough, Dick was standing before him, looking upwards. His hair was in a curly disarray, and he was tangling his hands in the hem of his Wonder Woman t-shirt. His expression was one of caution.

“Where have you been, child?” Damian demanded. 

“Had breakfast with Shanti and the Patels,” Dick murmured in response. He dipped his head. “Came over here to say hi to the animals, just like you I guess.”

“Tt. ‘Say hi.’ I’m practicing my drawing from life, Richard.”

“Oh, you draw?” Dick perked up, looking a little less cautious. “Can I see?”

He didn’t wait for a response before standing up on his tiptoes and grabbing the sketches. 

“Give those back, you little brat!”

Instead of one of his usual responses, much to his astonishment, Dick leveled a glare at him. 

“You have a lot of guts, calling me a brat after what happened in Montgomery.”

Damian gaped. Dick kept glaring.

“Why did you have to get those people angry at us? We could’ve gotten in _real_ trouble. Dad could’ve gotten arrested. And _then_ , those things you said to _me_ ?” Dick blinked hard. “How could you even have _said_ that? Do you _like_ seeing me upset? I thought...I thought we were friends.”

“What are you -- those people would’ve hated us no matter what we did. You heard the way they were talking about Arabs, the way the people around them talked about Roma. Besides, _you_ kicked him!”

“To protect _you_!” Dick cried out. “You just said that stuff to try and prove you were better!”

“Do you not think I’m better than them?”

“You are, yeah. But that’s not gonna _matter_ if you get the police on Mr. Haly and my family and everyone else here.” Dick blinked hard again, and Damian realized he was near tears. “They’ve all had really bad lives. They don’t tell me, but I _know_. I don’t want anything else bad to happen to them. We gotta protect them.” 

“What you people have to _do_ is come down hard on those who try anything, like I did on that man Davis last night.” Damian jumped down from the feed boxes, so that he and Dick were standing nose to nose. “Why do you let this happen to you?” He was shouting now. “You talk of protection, yet look at your people! Look at yourself! You need to be able to stop these things from happening to you, yet you can’t!”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone.” Dick sounded near tears. “I hate those guys too, Fida, I hate them, but there’s gotta be a better way to help the people around us.”

“There isn’t. You have to be fierce, you have to be hard, because the world is even harder --”

Dick clapped his hands over his ears. The drawings scattered over the ground.

“Stop saying that!” he shrieked. “Stop telling me that people are bad!”

“It’s the truth!” Damian shouted back. “I know that it’s the truth, because I’ve had it beaten into me more times than you’ve had hot dinners, there’s very little good about general humanity worth preserving --”

“Who told you that?” Dick demanded. “Did you really figure that out for yourself, or did someone _tell_ you that that was the truth? You’re not clever for figuring something out if you didn’t really figure it out, if you’re just saying what someone told you.”

Damian was so shocked, for a moment he couldn’t reply.

Dick extended his small hands. The first tear ran down his cheek.

“Fida, what happened? What happened that made you hate people and think you’re so much better than them?”

Damian lost control. 

He screamed in rage, and struck the side of the lion enclosure. Dick flinched, stumbling backwards, a choking sob escaping his lips.

“Nothing!” Damian roared. “God, what is it with you and your family? What makes you all so goddamn convinced that something terrible had to happen to me? Why do you all think that my life, my upbringing, was wrong, that what happened to me was wrong? Nothing happened! Nothing was wrong! Everything, everything that happened was for _my_ sake! For my own good!” 

The screams were tearing themselves raw from his throat. Dick’s eyes were wide, the tears flowing freely from them. 

“Not that I’d expect you to know anything about that! What do you have? _Family_ and _love_ and _safety_ and _freedom_ and the _delusion_ that you can be good, can do good! You don’t know me! You don’t know what’s best for me! I am the greatest of my house, the pride of my grandfather, I am theirs, _I am_ \--”

“ _Stop!_ ”

Damian felt the small, warm hands clasp his arms. Saw the blue eyes looking directly into his. 

All of a sudden, the words in his mouth evaporated.

One hand fell away, until Dick was just holding him by the wrist. That small, calloused grip felt like an anchor. 

“Stop,” Dick said softly. “You’re scaring me.”

For a few long moments, Damian was still. All that seemed to exist was the pounding of his own heart, and this little child, this man that he knew. 

Then he cleared his throat, taking Dick’s hand away. 

“Thank you for helping me regain control,” he said stiffly. “And I...apologize for snapping at you. That was unworthy of me.”

Dick sniffled, wiping his eyes, his expression finally relaxing again. 

“S’...S’okay.”

Then he picked up the drawings from the ground, carefully studying them.

“And, wow. Fida, I like these a lot. They’re really good.”

A slight glow entered Damian’s chest. Something that felt like the opposite of before. 

“Well, of course they are. I’ve been drawing and painting for years now.”

Dick grinned, even though his eyes were still puffy. 

“Ah, you’re back to normal again. Cool.”

“Hmm. Tt.”

Dick got to the portrait of Zitka, and exclaimed in delight.

“It looks just like her!”

Damian almost smiled too.

“Hm, it’s very easy to please you. You can keep that one.”

“I can!? I can -- oh my God, I -- Fida, thank you!”

Damian suddenly found himself being tackle-hugged, Dick practically hanging off him as he happily squeezed around his chest. 

“Alright, get off me,” he grumbled, prying Dick away, ignoring the warmth in his chest. “We should return. Your parents are probably wondering where we are.”

Dick nodded, handing back the drawings of the lions, but clutching the drawing of Zitka like it was a long-lost da Vinci. 

“I...I’m glad you’re feeling better. Just, like, please don’t lose it on me like that again, okay?”

“I shall try to stay in control from now on.”

Dick nodded again. Then he took off like a shot, forcing Damian to sprint to keep up with him, so that they were both red-faced and panting by the time they returned to the Graysons’ door. 

John opened it before they even reached for the handle.

“Good timing,” he said warmly. “Breakfast’s ready and all.”

Dick cheered and ducked under his father’s arm, darting inside. Damian rolled his eyes and followed.

Inside, the trailer smelled of fresh coffee and eggs and frying butter. Despite having already had breakfast, Dick immediately started helping himself to onion-and-pepper omelet, then bounced over to join his mother at the dining table, where she was engrossed in a book. Damian slowed, looking at them. 

John moved over next to her, wrapping his arm around her shoulders, kissing her cheek. She relaxed into his touch, reaching one hand up to caress over his. 

They looked so whole, so happy and full of life. But the image from his nightmare returned, the image of her not as she and her husband were now, but as she would be: a shattered bloody corpse.

He remembered seeing the details in his father’s files on the Grayson case. When Zucco had sabotaged the ropes of their trapeze, it had taken full momentum to make them snap -- so that the five of them had been swung outwards by their own trapezes, they had been _propelled_ downwards, so they had fallen a hundred feet to the ground below even more rapidly than they should’ve. 

Richard had been the lucky one, he’d landed relatively softly on the sand, so that his brain and spinal damage only made him quadriplegic and catatonic for the remaining few years he’d lived. Karla had hit the outside of the ring, cracking her neck on it; she’d died instantly. Their son had fallen headfirst, he’d died instantly too when his skull split open on impact. But John had dropped feet-first onto the solid ground, so that his legs had shattered in their sockets _before_ he’d fallen forward onto the ring and his ribs had been snapped in half, puncturing through his lungs and heart. And like his dream had made clear, Mary had gone down flat, so that every bit of her body hit the ground at the same time, almost every bone in her body had broken at the same time, so that it was impossible to tell what had killed her. So many of the injuries the coroner had found on her could’ve been the one.

“Fida, sit down with us,” John said warmly. “Don’t just stand there and gape, you look like you just saw a ghost.”

Damian grimaced.

But he scooped up some omelet, poured some coffee, and sat down with them. 

“Mom, Dad,” Dick was clamoring, “look what Fida drew for me.” He held up the sketch of his elephant. “Did you know that he draws?”

Both elder Graysons took the picture, staring at it in genuine impressment and awe, like their son had pointed it out in an art museum, instead of literally picking it up off the ground.

They looked at Damian next, smiling.

“We’ll get you some better paper,” John decided, handing the drawing back to his son and placing his other hand on Damian’s shoulder. 

“You’ve got real skill, Fida,” Mary said warmly. “You’re a better artist than a lot of adults.” 

“If you like doing this,” John agreed, “you _definitely_ should keep it up. Just let us know what we can do so that you can.”

“It was just a part of my education, that’s all,” Damian murmured. “I _am_ excellent, you’re very right about that, but it’s not exactly something one puts real stock in.”

“Nonsense.” John squeezed his shoulder gently. “As soon as breakfast’s done, remind me to go to the art supplies store. What do you need, paper, yeah, and what else, pencils, markers --?”

“But art supplies are expensive,” Damian argued further, “And you’re poor.”

“We’ll manage,” Mary cut in. “And don’t worry about it. It’s not your job to take on adult responsibilities, Fida. It’s your job to just be a kid, okay?”

Damian stared at his plate, feeling that strange warmth in his chest again.

John pulled him closer into a one-armed hug, just like the one he was giving his wife; close enough that Damian could feel the warmth off the Graysons’ bodies, the faint breeze of their breaths. 

Could almost hear the rhythmic beat of their hearts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> habibi - my love


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Massive apologies for the long wait again. And of course, happy Halloween!

On the train ride to Savannah, Damian drew. 

Drizzly rain, unlike the storm he’d fought Davis in, trickled down the windows, painting the Southern countryside in swaths of gray. He established himself in the dining car, propped his new sketchbook and materials on the table, let River serve him a cup of coffee and an orange juice, and lost himself. 

Some of the drawings were from memory, and in black ink, throwing the white paper into sharp relief: weaponry, forbidding mountains, hidden shrines, monsters, blood pouring off a pair of hands. Bats; the colony of creatures that hid in his father’s cave, flying, hanging, their fearful silhouettes from afar and their portraits up close. His parents, their faces and bodies in shadow. Stephanie, Barbara, Alfred, Cassandra, even Jason and Tim, adult Dick gazing at out at the viewer, drawn in immaculate detail. Stephanie’s determination, Barbara’s imperious gaze, Alfred’s stoicism, Cassandra’s half-smile, Jason scowling, Tim’s face turned half away, and Dick, with the cowl down, looking hopeful, looking tired. There, the black seemed appropriate. 

But then he found himself drawing the circus in color. The red of the big top, the green of Shanti’s dress, the yellows and purples of the clowns, the blues in the sideshow tents, the golds and oranges that made up the cats. It seemed _wrong_ to leave it in black and white, somehow. 

 _What’s_ wrong _with me?_

He decided to change tactics and return to drawing from memory. As he did, River came over with a fresh glass of orange juice and peered over his shoulder, watching him ink in the likenesses of the great Bialyan dragon-bats, the family that he’d killed to retrieve the scepter of kings at the al Ghuls’ behest. The only one left alive was his own, his champion Goliath, who faced the outside of the page, ears alert. 

“You have a weird imagination, young Mr. Himay,” River remarked. She was wearing a sparkly silver dress today, her nails and lips painted the color of ripe plums. Her high heels were, to his eyes, reminiscent of torture devices. “Why does the big guy have a ring in his nose?”

“Goliath?” he replied absently, picking up a red marker to color in the aforementioned creature. His strokes, coloring in his dragon-bat, were very careful, almost gentle. “To mark him as domesticated, of course.”

“Of course.” A heavily penciled eyebrow arched upwards.

Damian realized his slip, and internally cursed himself. Though thankfully, the woman seemed to put it down to youthful imagination. 

Maybe being thought of as a child had its benefits. Though he still didn't have to like it.

As she watched him ink in Goliath’s image, Otto the elephant trainer walked into the dining car. His ginger beard had grown in thicker; he yawned, stretching his big arms over his head, which made his t-shirt ride up and expose his soft belly. Damian saw River’s gaze soften, and he rolled his eyes. _Honestly._

“Hello, darling,” she greeted, her rough voice growing warm. Otto moved over to her, wrapping her up in his arms, kissing her rouged cheek. Her teased curls almost buried his strong arms. 

“How’re you doing, _cherie_?” 

“Same as I was yesterday, darling. Such is life.”

The two of them moved to sit down at a different table nearby, him resting his big, calloused hand over her expertly manicured one.

“It can’t be that bad.”

“It can be worse, actually. My expenses just went up, Otto.” She reached into her purse with her free hand and pulled out what looked like a hospital report; Damian stopped drawing to get a better look, catching the words _Leon St. Croix_ and _recurrence_ and _metastasis_ and _stage three melanoma_.

Damian suddenly felt like an intruder.

“ _Mon Dieu._ ” Otto looked horrified. “Your father...the cancer came back?”

River sighed.

“And I really doubt my mother can keep covering the bills this time. The first time nearly wiped out all her savings.”

“But will they accept money from you?”

“I have to try, don’t I? I’ll call her now, see what she says.”

River took a clunky, old-fashioned cell phone from her purse next, dialing in the numbers by hand. It didn’t pick up until after nearly nine rings, and even when she held it to her ear, Damian could hear the woman’s voice on the other end.

 _“Jordan, baby,”_ her mother said, _“you calling me to tell you’re coming home at last?”_

“No, Mama, I --” For the first time since he’d met her, he heard River’s voice tremble. “The hospital sent me the report...told me Dad’s cancer came back. I wanna know if I can help out.”

 _“Sure you can help, baby.”_ Her mother paused. _“But...are you coming home?”_

“I can’t, I have a job to do. Besides, you know Dad doesn’t want to see me, Mama.”

_“It’s not that, Jordan, he doesn’t even mind the circus, he just...doesn’t like your datin’ men, and your drag thing, that’s all. I promise you, he misses his son.”_

“Yes, and that’s the problem,” River murmured. “Alright. I’ll send you the cash next payday. Love you, Mama.”

_“Love you too, baby.”_

She hung up, sighing again. Otto rubbed his hand over hers. 

“ _Je suis d_ _ésolé, ma cherie._ ”

“Me too, darling. Me too.” She brushed strands of her hair out of her eyes, then wiped under her eyelashes. “Ugh. How can I keep a beat face with my mascara running everywhere?”

“You always look good to me,” he promised. She smiled wanly.

Feeling more uncomfortable by the second, Damian glanced out the window. He noticed that the train was slowing, that through the trickly glass, the Savannah skyline was growing close. He abruptly drained his orange juice, shutting his sketchbook. 

“In case you two haven’t noticed, we’re almost there,” he announced.

They both started, like they’d forgotten he was there. 

“Thanks for the heads-up,” Otto said awkwardly, squeezing his lover’s hand. She blinked slowly, the glitter in her eyeliner flashing. 

“Don’t worry about any of that, young man. You’ll get it when you’re older.”

Damian looked at the table as he picked up his belongings. 

“I doubt it.” He cleared his throat, trying to regain his dignity. “Where are the Graysons?”

“John and Mary’re having a lie-in. I left Dickie guarding the elephants.”

“Not much of a guard. Considering that the elephants could use him as a toothpick.”

The adults laughed, albeit a little desperately. Damian looked at them again, her in her evening dress at eleven in the morning, him in his worn jeans and white t-shirt, her clutching his hand like a lifeline, him letting her hold on. 

He wondered if his parents had ever held each other, comforted each other. 

Shaking his head, he left the dining car, leaving the door swinging behind him and the pair in their silence.

 

* * *

 

Sure enough, he found Dick seated half-buried in straw, legs bent into a complicated pretzel, unknowingly and happily reading a book while the elephants milled about above him. Clementine had her head in his lap, almost asleep.

“What are you reading?”

“It’s called _The House of the Scorpion._ ” Dick showed him the front cover. “It’s new, Dad got it in Montgomery. It’s set in the future about a kid who’s a clone of this powerful really really old guy, and at first the old guy treats him great ‘cause he sees him as a part of himself, but then it turns out the old guy was just using him all along for the old guy’s own benefit and nobody thinks of the kid as a real human person with autonomy and stuff except for a few people who love him...and that’s as far as I’ve got so far. I don’t know yet whether the old guy ends up winning or whether the kid gets free.”

“Sounds far-fetched.” Damian sat down in the straw next to him, stacking up his art supplies on his lap so they wouldn’t get dirty. “Richard, do you think that romance and the intricacies of life make sense to adults?”

“Fida, I don’t think romance makes sense to _anyone_ . That stuff’s weird.” He stroked his small hand over Clementine’s wrinkled head. “I heard Dad and Uncle Rick talking once, and I think he and Mom made both their families really mad just being with each other, but even so they _still_ got married. Hazel and Rose make a lot of people mad dating each other. Alejandro and Oscar make a lot of people mad living with each other. And I dunno why, but Kiran and Sita made everyone in _their_ lives mad when they got married too.”

“Doesn’t seem worth the trouble,” Damian concluded, scratching the baby elephant behind her ears like she was a puppy. 

“I dunno,” Dick said wistfully. “Mom and Dad are pretty happy with their choice, with each other. Maybe I’ll be happy like that someday.”

“Ugh.”

Dick laughed at his disgruntled expression just as the train lurched to its typical sudden stop, nearly throwing the boys onto their backs. The elephants grumbled softly.

“We’re here! It’s Savannah!” Dick jumped to his feet, clapping his book shut. “We always get a great turnout here.”

“I wonder why. Maybe the Georgians have something wrong with their brains,” Damian groused, getting to his feet and picking straw out of his hair. 

Dick just laughed again, extending his free hand. Damian decided to forget his worries for the others and accepted the proffered hand -- which he immediately regretted as Dick dragged him through the cars, quickly to the nearest door, which he hauled open with a great creaking groan, the two of them bursting out into the drizzly, gray spring sunlight. 

“C’mon.” Dick tucked his book under his other arm, grinning at Damian. “We’ve got some time till Mom and Dad’ll want us back for lunch. We’ve got a whole big field that they haven’t set the tents up on yet; let’s play some tag.”

Damian let go of his hand.

“I don’t play tag.”

Dick stared at him.

“I’d think you’d stop being surprised by this sort of thing by now.” 

“Well I’m not.” Dick put his now-free hand on his hip. “C’mon, play with me, please.”

“No. I don’t want to deal with anyone else today.”

Damian sat down on the edge of the car, scooting underneath the top, so as to avoid getting rained on. Dick looked annoyed and disappointed.

“Fida, even when you’re not being mean, you can still be really rude.”

“So I’ve been told.” Damian opened his sketchbook again.

Dick groaned in irritation, then set his book down with a _thump_ on Damian’s lap -- which, to his embarrassment, made him jump.

“Fine. But you guard my book. And don’t say anything else rude about me. Got it?”

And he sprinted off before Damian could even retort, running after the roustabouts, jumping up like a squirrel to see them begin to set up the tents and unpack the materials. 

There was certainly none of the exhaustion that Damian had inked into his adult self’s expression.

He picked up the book in his lap and studied the cover.

Then, scoffing, he set it aside and went back to drawing. Trying to calm himself with the strokes, trying to find a neutral subject.

But despite himself, it morphed into a picture of the Graysons’ trailer, of the lights on the stairwell, of the warm reds and painted flowers on the side. He reached for his colored pencils more than ever while drawing it. 

He lifted his sketchbook and studied it, examining the details.

Part of him was rightfully pleased with how lifelike it had turned out, while another part of him was furious with himself. _This_ , as a subject? He needed to distance himself from these people. Distance! He was leaving in less than three weeks! He could not allow himself to get any more attached to these people than he already was. He had already let too much slip. Too much of him was exposed, vulnerable. He could not let them sink themselves into the bare flesh, let them wound him.

With both hands Damian grabbed the fistful of papers that the circus drawings were on, bracing himself to rip.

Several seconds passed.

 _Rip them,_ he told himself. _Do not let these attachments manifest. You are better than this. Better than them._

Several seconds more.

Damian yelled in frustration and threw the sketchbook to the side; it thumped down hard on top of Dick’s book, falling open.

The problem was within him. The problem _was_ him.

Because he could not bring himself to destroy that which he had worked to create. He did not have what it took.

He did not have what he knew his grandfather did.

 

* * *

 

He and Dick were both slumped over the plastic table while John set down the cups and silverware, while Mary dished rich-smelling beef stew into four bowls.

“Dismal day,” she sighed. Her hair was even frizzier than usual and her faded t-shirt of the day was long-sleeved, printed with songbirds in flight. She’d put the radio on again, this time to the indie rock station. The bass beat of The Raincoats rattled through the staticky speakers. “Thought you should have something warm.”

“Isn’t everything you cook warm?” Damian muttered, but he accepted the bowl anyway. Along with the beef, thick chunks of carrot and potato, meltingly tender, filled the heavy broth, heavily perfumed with black pepper and rosemary. 

Dick ate as ravenously as always while John read his own book contentedly, mustache twitching as he enjoyed his wife’s stew. His gaze landed on the sketchbook that he’d bought, resting carefully on the table next to the bowls, Damian edging around it as he ate like it was a bomb he’d wired himself.

Mary took a spoonful, looking at the men and boys at her table.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying your new sketchbook, Fida.”

“Enjoying is perhaps the wrong word for it,” he muttered, suddenly feeling his cheeks grow warm. She and John had spent quite a bit on his art supplies, after all. Of course they would take an interest in making sure their money was being put to use.

“May I see?” John asked.

Damian nodded absently, before realizing that this was a _profoundly_ bad idea --

But before he could change his mind, the book had fallen open again, and the parents had seen Tim, seen Jason, and finally stopped at Cassandra.

Horror struck Damian in the chest. The portrait was a bust of her, based off the pictures he'd seen; she was clad in a black sleeveless workout top, her short hair in feathery tufts around her face, her dark eyes soft. The warm half-smile on her lips posed a sharp contrast to her hard shoulders, tattooed with knife and bullet scars.

Dick stopped chewing so loudly and peered across the table. Damian’s blood had frozen; adult Dick considered Cassandra his sister. His _real_ sister. Foolish, of course, he would never have a  _real_ sibling, but foolish or no, it still posed a threat to his mission to return home with the timeline unmolested.

 “Who’s that?” Dick asked, intrigued.

Damian swallowed hard. Time to lie.

“She’s y -- _my_ older sister.”

The parents gave him surprised looks.

“You have a sister?”

Perfect. If they thought those idiots were _his_ siblings, they would _never_ suspect them of being associated with Dick. Even a future Dick.

“Yes. She’s my sister. The other two are my…” The word tasted sour in his mouth, “brothers.”

Thank _God_ Tim and Jason would never know he referred to them as such, even under duress. Jason would laugh nastily. Tim would just give him a look of disgust or anger, the only looks he knew _how_ to give Damian. 

In Tim’s portrait, even half turned away, one could clearly see the shadows under his eyes, could see how hard the line of his mouth had become, so unlike Bruce’s old photos where Tim smiled, where he laughed. His silky hair had grown long and unkempt, his eyes looked close to breaking. Jason, similarly, seemed to have his glare embedded into his face. His leather jacket was hunched around his shoulders; his curly hair growing all over the place with the white streak, the mark of death, falling in his eyes. The cigarette between his lips shrouded his head with smoke. In _his_ old photos, he had smiled and laughed too.

It was different with Cassandra. Even after she had become Black Bat, relinquished Batgirl, the title she loved, to Stephanie...from what he could tell from Dick’s and Barbara’s conversations, Cassandra had not changed so radically, not become embittered, not like her so-called brothers had.

“They look like lots of fun,” Dick observed. “Why are you guys all different ethnicities and stuff?”

“ _Dick_.”

“Different mothers,” Damian muttered, still facing the table. “But…” This was also hard to say, “Same father.”

“Oh, okay.”

“You kids all seem like you’ve gone through some tough stuff,” John said sympathetically, closing the book to Damian’s _immense_ relief. “I mean, the way you draw your brothers and sister…it seems like they’ve seen some bad things in their time”

Damian thought of them all, thought of everything they had all lived through. 

A great amount came to mind.

“Nothing quite that bad, in fact,” he replied. “Nothing that bad at all, really.”

“If you say so.” John looked like he wanted to say more, but just exchanged looks with his wife instead.

Dick, thankfully, was focusing on something else.

“I _love_ that you have so many siblings,” he said wistfully. “That’s the _dream_.”

“Tt. I know. But if you knew them, you wouldn’t say that.”

Dick looked at him, rather like he was reassessing him. Then he burst out:

“ _That_ must be why you’re so rude. Everyone I know with siblings are rude to each other all the time and it’s no big deal with them.” He threw his hands up, exclaiming. “It all makes sense! Okay, you’re forgiven then.”

Damian just gaped at him. John and Mary’s pensive expressions broke and they actually laughed.

“Though, I mean, I’m still pretty annoyed. So maybe it’s more like you’re _pre_ -forgiven.”

“You’re a maniac,” Damian groaned. Dick just rolled his eyes at him, sneaking a middle finger in while his parents weren’t looking.

“So what are they like? Especially your sister. She seems cool.”

“Of course you think your -- I mean, _my_ sister seems cool, because you positively fawn over powerful, violence-prone women,” Damian sighed. Dick laughed in nervous embarrassment, and John chuckled, wrapping an arm around his wife’s shoulders.

“He has good taste. Gets that from me.” 

“Carry on, Fida,” Mary interrupted.

“Well...I...the brothers aren’t worth talking about, but naturally, Richard, you would love them. Genuinely love them, though I can’t imagine at all why.” A little bitterness involuntarily colored his words; he cleared his throat, aware that he still had an audience. “My sister...someone close to her, someone she admired, he...used her for his own gain, at her own expense. Made her suffer, robbed her of...a chance, of her foolish innocence, she did not realize it for a while, but when she did, and left him…and when someone else took her in, she was better for it, I suppose.” He shook his head. “I do not understand her experience at all.”

Mary nodded slowly.

“Leaving someone you love because they don’t treat you well, even if you _know_ it’s the right thing...that’s a damn hard thing to do. Your sister should be proud of herself.”

“Well, again, I wouldn’t know,” Damian said decisively.

Dick sighed wistfully again.

“My God, Richard, if you want them so bad you can _have_ them.”

“I honestly wish I _could_ have them.”

“You’re _going_ to be a brother too, Dick, we promise,” John chuckled. “Just be patient, _čhavo_.”

Dick folded his arms across his chest.

“I do not like being patient.”

“You have never said anything truer in your short life,” Damian snorted.

Dick flipped him off again. But this time, his mother saw and promptly slapped his hand, making him yelp.

“ _Richard John Grayson_ , I had _better not_ catch you doing that ever again.”

“You won’t,” Dick moaned, clutching his hand. Then, under his breath: “catch me.”

For the first time that day, Damian could almost forget all the knots in his chest.

 

* * *

 

The relief didn’t last long.

While Dick went out to play again, Damian was suffering the great indignity of having to do the dishes with John, who had the almighty nerve to hum along to the radio. 

“You’re giving me a headache,” Damian moaned, momentarily forgetting that he had wet, soapy hands and clutching his ears. He screeched in horror at his own folly, and John actually doubled over laughing.

“Don’t you dare laugh at me!”

“I wasn’t laughing at _you_ , kiddo, I was laughing at the very loud screech owl that just invaded my home and kitchen.”

Damian splashed water at him, which did not stop the laughter.

But that wasn’t what broke the relief.

Mary was still seated at the table, nursing a coffee in a Justice Society of America mug and going over the family’s expenses in her notebook, a stack of unopened mail resting next to her hand. 

“And the baby comes in September...and as of right now, we still have some savings,” she mused, tapping her pencil, “But not enough. From here on, we need to start saving more…” She examined her budget. “Where could we make cuts? Not the meal plan, as it is it’s hard to cover the four mouths we have to feed, especially with a fifth coming…”

“At least we have a place to live where we don’t pay rent or electricity.” John set a bowl on the drying rack. “Mary, if it helps we could cut down on entertainment. I’ll buy fewer books, not take Dick to the movies --”

“John, even if we’re poor, I don’t want us to be miserable,” Mary said sternly. “Especially not Dick, he’s just a little boy. Besides, taking him to the movies isn’t what’s restricting us. It’s not like baby supplies cost six dollars.”

“But how else are we going to save more?” John asked. “We’re already hooked up to a communal generator, use communal water --”

Damian knew this, it was why their electricity was spotty at best and they almost never had hot water. If anyone wanted a hot bath, they would have to heat it up on the stove one potful at a time. Of course he’d been forced to live menially at times, as part of his training, but after living at Wayne Manor for months, it’d still been a shock.

“-- our biggest expenses are gas for the stove, food, clothes, and medical stuff, and we can’t ask Kostos to make an exception for us, he has a family of his own to feed. Mary, you remember what having a baby is like, this one’ll completely wipe our savings out.”

Mary sighed deeply, staring at her budget. Damian, like earlier, got the distinct, uncomfortable feeling that he shouldn’t be there.

“Well, we can certainly buy less clothing,” she mused, finally setting her pencil down. “Dick’s not going to like that either, but better to let him wear his clothes all the way out than make him _totally_ miserable.”

“I suppose that works.” 

Damian rinsed off the last spoon and set it down, the turmoil in his chest returning. 

“It’s not going to be easy though,” she sighed, dropping her head into her hands, black curls falling around her arms. Her husband dried his hands and walked over to her, sitting down on the chair on her right and taking her in his arms, rubbing her shoulders, kissing her forehead. Her body seemed to go limp, like a released bowstring.

“We’ll manage, Mary. We always have.”

Now Damian _definitely_ knew he shouldn’t be here.

He dried his own hands hastily, snatching up the umbrella and diving through the trailer door. 

Through the trickly rain, Damian saw the tents going up, the vivid candy-red and white like a flag against the gray, watery sky. Several of the sideshow performers were helping put up their own tents, erecting the neon-lit _Incredible Illustrated Man_ and _Shanti, The Beautiful Snake Dancer_ and _Irish Siamese Twins_ signs. 

Dick wasn’t too far. His book still in hand, he’d climbed a tree at the edge of the field and hooked his knees over the bough, dangling upside down like...well, like a bat. He was still reading, the book in front of his face, the cover reversed, swinging gently back and forth as though he were still on a trapeze.

“Hello, Richard.”

Dick lowered -- or rather, lifted -- his book. Upon seeing Damian, he smiled tentatively, like he was offering an olive branch.

“Are you just passing by? Or do you actually wanna hang out this time?”

“Well, I...I have nothing else to do.”

The smile grew until it lit up his whole face.

Then he pulled himself upwards until he was seated on the bough, then dropping neatly and landing on the balls of his feet, light as air.

“C’mon. Let’s go look around the tents, see what everyone’s up to.”

Damian followed, pulling the umbrella over Dick’s head as well. 

The sideshow tents were in a thousand different colors, their signs lit up to cut through the gray with pink and yellow and green, the electric glow of the neon giving off a dull hum. Several of the tent flaps were open, and Dick and Damian peered through one. 

Nora McKinley, the fat woman tattooed over her body with a map of the world, was in the middle of playing a game of solitaire. An enormous tank containing a red-and-violet Siamese fighting fish occupied one corner, and Nora was talking out loud, seemingly to herself.

“Everything’s much the same, Mom, don’t worry. What? No, I’m not married yet. Stop asking.” She laid down on of her cards. “Oh, what do you know, Mom? You’ve been dead since Jimmy Carter took office. Times have changed, and you don’t even know it.”

The fish in the corner swam around brightly.

“I don’t think we should interrupt her conversation,” Dick said seriously. “She and her mom might not like that.”

“Why do you people indulge this?” Damian asked. “She’s obviously insane. She should be in a mental institution.”

“She’s not hurting anyone,” Dick argued. “Besides, if she were in a nuthouse, she’d be away from all of us, all her friends. She’d be all lonely. Her family are all gone, she has no one left except us and Tuptim.”

“Who?”

“The fish.”

“Ah.”

Damian observed the woman a second longer.

"You _need_ family and friends," Dick insisted again. 

“Let’s go somewhere else,” Damian muttered, and so they poked their heads into the next tent.

Samson Jones, the strongman, who, though he was a big top performer, appeared to be hanging out with Alice Johnson, the bearded lady. Alice was plucking out Britney Spears on her mandolin while Samson was engaged with Audre Lorde’s _Sister Outsider._

“Hey Alice,” he said after a moment, “do you know how to play any Polynesian, Hawaiian music on that thing?”

“Do you even have to ask, Sam?” she chuckled. Her beard twitched as she smiled. “Anything you want. Ever since I was a kid. Mom taught me how to play _Aloha ‘Oe_ on this, the guitar, and the ukulele when I was just five. I’m not as good as she was, though.”

“Stop lyin’.”

“It’s the truth! Nobody could play music like Hina Kahale-Johnson.”

“Aw, and all my dad could do was sing Stevie Wonder. And not well, either.”

“I don’t think _they_ want to be interrupted either, Richard,” Damian said to his companion while Alice laughed.

“Probably not.”

The next tent they looked in was Shanti’s. She wasn’t alone either, both elder Patels and Soledad Diaz were with her, as was, of course, Chamelee the python asleep in her tank. Everyone was drinking sweet milky tea from copper cups, the smell of spice curling from the tea and through the air.

"So Lakshman's finally over his cold," Soledad was saying. "You'd best buckle up, Shanti, because now that they won't risk infecting you, those kids are absolutely gonna be here every day again."

"Oh, I can live with that," Shanti replied, an easy smile coming to her lips. "As long as they're not _my_ kids. I only have to dote on the little darlings a couple hours a day, instead of full-time."

"At least you're aware of your privilege," Sita told her, then murmured something in Hindi to her husband. Kiran replied in Hindi, and both Shanti and Sita laughed.

“You can really exclude a girl like that,” Soledad scolded, but she was smiling anyway as well. 

“Try learning Hindi,” Sita teased.

 _“Tratas de aprender español, puta,”_ Soledad retorted lightly.

 _“_ _Aaj nahin, kutiya,”_ Sita finished while Kiran and Shanti kept laughing.

“Must be the grown-ups’ social hour,” Dick remarked.

“My God, they are _so_ unprofessional.”

“You’re telling me.” Dick grinned mischievously. “You have no idea how many languages I know swear words in ‘cause of all these guys.”

Damian rolled his eyes while Dick snickered to himself.

“Is there anyone, do you think, who’s not preoccupied with seeing someone else?”

Dick finished snickering and pondered this, scratching his hair with the corner of his book.

“Laverne, probably.”

“Laverne...the old crone, who makes the cookies?”

“That’s the one.”

The inside of the crimson tent Dick pointed out, outside of which the sign proclaimed _The Great Madame Chu: Your Future Seen, Your Fortune Told_ , came as a visual slap to the face. The red fabric was offset by a thousand charms and dangling bric-a-brac, sigils, Chinese calligraphy, astrology charts, metal charms and copper wind chimes shaped like animals in motion, leopards and rabbits and monkeys and snakes and peacocks. The whole place smelled strongly of incense. The old woman sitting at a table draped with a gold tablecloth, who was indeed the one who had given Mary her leftover almond cookies, had three small coins stacked up next to the deck of cards she was shuffling. She was wearing her red robes, embroidered with their tigers and dragons, and enormous gold hoop earrings, her silver hair tied back in a braid. 

Damian folded down the umbrella.

“Hi Laverne,” Dick greeted her. She looked up, and immediately burst into delighted laughter.

“Well hey! If it isn’t Dickie Grayson! C’mere, sit down, and bring the Himay kid too. I’ll put the kettle on."

Dick and Damian both sat down in the chairs opposite her side as she got up, going to the corner where a small Bunsen burner had been set up, a copper kettle resting atop it. While she filled it with water and turned on the burner, Damian examined the deck of cards. They were like none he’d ever seen before, illustrated with strange paintings of people and objects. 

“Never seen tarot cards before, kiddo?”

“Stop calling me ‘kiddo,’ crone.”

To his surprise, instead of taking “crone,” to heart, Laverne just cackled.

“Oh, good luck trying to insult me. I’ve been alive for seventy-two years, Fida Himay. I lived through the Red Scare and World War II and, which was _much_ worse, forty years of marriage to my husband. There’s not a thing you can say to me that I haven’t already heard.”

She set three cups of green tea down on the table. Damian could not help but notice that the tea was in mugs that featured Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, respectively. 

“Fancy teacups are only for the clients,” she explained, though he hadn’t said anything. “I figure, they’re paying to hear bullshit, they should at least get to use the fancy teacups.”

“So you’re aware that you’re a phony?” Damian said skeptically as Dick tried to sip the tea in the Superman mug and promptly scalded his tongue. 

“I’m aware that I have to make up half of what I tell them on the spot in order to make a damn drop of sense. There’s a lot you can learn about a person and their circumstances just by lookin’ at ‘em. Then I just give ‘em advice based on what I see.”

Detection. Not divination. _That_ Damian understood.

“You _do_ know how to throw the I Ching and read tarot though,” Dick piped up, fanning his tongue. 

“True. Better than absolutely anyone. Don’t believe a word I’m saying, but I’ll be damned if I’m not fantastic at it.”

“Tt. I’ll believe _that_ when I see it.”

“Don’t mind him,” Dick told her hastily. “He’s very rude. But he has to be, he had a weird family.”

Damian rolled his eyes and sipped the tea. 

“I get that.” She picked up the cards. “Shuffle ‘em, Dickie.”

As Damian watched, Dick clumsily shuffled the cards, dropping them once or twice. 

She took the deck back, then withdrew five cards, setting them down in front of him and turning them over.

“Ace of cups, three of pentacles, six of wands, and...the tower. And...death.”

Damian was so shocked he almost spilled his tea down his shirt. Laverne looked actually confused and worried for a moment, before shaking her head and regaining her buoyant, easy attitude.

“Eh, I’m talking shit, remember?” She looked at the cards. “Ace of cups. That’s love, new relationships, compassion.”

Dick looked directly at Damian as she said it. His throat seemed to swell, his heart hammering, fixating on _death_. 

“Three of pentacles: teamwork, collaboration, learning, and implementation of it. And six of wands: success, confidence, and gaining recognition for it all --”

“Duh,” Dick said brightly as Damian’s heart kept beating too quickly. “That’s all kinda my job.”

“I like when you get cocky,” Laverne grinned, poking him in the nose, making him giggle. “The tower, though…” She sobered up again. “Upheaval, revelation, awakening, chaos...disaster.”

 _It’s just a coincidence,_ Damian reminded himself. _Fortune-telling is just a way to get money out of the foolish masses._  

“And of course, death.” The old woman scratched her hair again. “Endings, change, transition, and transformation.”

Dick still seemed unperturbed, taking a giant slurp of his tea, his blue eyes wide. 

“So what does it all mean?”

“You’re on a good track for now, Dickie, but something’s gonna happen. Something big, and not likely good. And everything’ll change for you after that.”

Dick frowned slightly, tilting his head to the side. But only slightly. His shoulders were still loose, his tone still light.

“But you’ll have love and success in the meantime; you care for others, your love, your relationships, they’re important to you right now. You’re gonna rely on them, make ‘em work for you.” She poked his nose again. “Sappy idiots like your dad would say you got a big heart; you gotta make it work.”

“Aw, don’t tease me Laverne.”

“I don’t tease kiddo, I give it straight.”

Damian looked at his mug again. The image of his father printed across the ceramic, Batman, who right then was half a shadow, half a folk story. The mantle that had been passed down, the man that had faded back into no more than legend. He rested the tip of his finger over the cowled face, his chest aching. 

“You next, Fida.”

Damian started.

“I have no time for this nonsense,” he sniffed haughtily. “These are just parlor tricks. I won’t indulge them.”

“Good to know. _You_ should know then, this’ll go faster and won’t waste your precious time if you shuffle the cards _now_ and stop your bitching.”

Dick snickered as the cards were shoved into Damian’s hands. Huffing, trying to steady his heartbeat, Damian hastily shuffled, then shoved them back at Laverne. She arched a white eyebrow, then laid down and turned over his five cards. 

“The devil, six of cups, eight of wands in reverse, nine of swords in reverse, and...the hanged man. The devil, that’s attachment, addiction, restriction, the darker side of yourself.”

_Just a coincidence._

“Six of cups: revisiting the past, innocence, joy, childhood memories.” 

Damian looked over at Dick. The younger boy’s eyes were still wide. 

“Eight of wands reversed is delays, frustration, resisting change, your internal alignment. Nine of swords reversed is inner turmoil, deep-seated fears, secrets, the release of worry.”

Damian glared at his mug.

“But the hanged man…” She chuckled. “Eh kiddo, you got some issues, but the hanged man means stopping, means surrendering. Letting go. And of course, it means new perspectives.”

Though neither she nor Dick were really taking this seriously, Damian felt flayed raw. His heart thundered against his ribs, knowing logically that neither of them could possibly know, but still pulling blindly against anyone knowing, against anyone knowing _any_ of the truth. It was bad enough that the Graysons had seen his drawings. Bad enough that they were poking around at his past, at his maternal family...

Ten days ago, he would’ve knocked over his tea, thrown the cards.

Instead, he gritted his teeth, stiffening his back. 

“Thank you, for your parlor tricks.”

“Always happy to perform ‘em.”

He placed a hand over his chest, trying to steady his heart. Dick peered at him, tilting his head owlishly, then placing a hand on his shoulder.

“You okay, Fida? It’s just a fun thing we do, you don’t need to get upset.”

“I’m not upset.” He took a deep breath. “Mrs. Chu…”

“It’s just Laverne, kiddo.”

“You really don’t believe in any of this?”

“It’s never given me a reason to.” She drank her own tea, Wonder Woman standing proudly on the side of the mug. “I believe in aliens and speedsters and Atlanteans and Amazons ‘cause I’ve seen them with my own eyes, but otherwise…” She shrugged. “There’s nothing magic about me. I’m just an old crone from Seattle.” She then winked. “Albeit a _very_ talented one. You kids should really take some of my food to go, do yourselves a great favor _and_ make it easier on Mary. God knows you’re probably stuffing your faces at all hours; that’s what _my_ kids were like when they were your age.”

Damian was about to refuse, still angry at her for unnerving him...then he paused. Mary _had_ mentioned that they were spending a lot of money on food, especially with an extra person around. Perhaps this _would_ help.

“Very well,” he snipped. “We’ll take your leftovers.”

Dick was delighted, clapping his hands all the way up to when she packed and handed him the bag full of food.

“Now get lost, kids,” she said brightly. “I’ve got dinner to put on and clients coming soon. And Dick, tell your mother I want my cookie Tupperware back.”

“Will do!”

They emerged back out into the spitty rain, huddling together under the umbrella. The colors of the circus, Damian thought as he squinted through the gray, seemed even brighter in the dismal weather. His artwork had not truly done them justice.

“Fida?”

He looked down at his companion. Dick smiled at him.

“I told you. I know you’re weird, but you’re cool too.”

“Get over yourself, Richard,” he sighed, but his heart began to finally steady.

“Nope. We’re not done hanging out.”

“Oh dear God.”

“I think it’s almost four-o-clock,” Dick continued. “Do you wanna go to the al Abbas’s with me? Cause you know, they’ve got a TV, and _The Emperor’s New Groove_ is gonna be on, and I really wanna see it again…”

“I haven’t seen that. What’s it about?”

“Ancient Mesoamerican politics,” Dick said innocently. “And a young guy realizing he was bad and becoming better. I think you’ll like it.”

“I suppose it sounds...tolerable.”

“Great!” Dick grabbed his hand, nearly yanking them out from under the umbrella as he ran. 

“Richard! You little flea! You have _got_ to _stop_ doing that!”

Dick just laughed. Try as he might, Damian could not stop himself from being affected by his happiness, wondering what it might be like to make his elder self laugh, to make him happy again instead of tired and beaten-down. Even now, to prevent that tiredness in his doomed parents.

He shook his head, viciously trying to excise the vision from his head.

But like the drawings, the urge could not be destroyed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goliath and the incident with the Bialyan dragon-bats are referenced from Robin: Son of Batman, which, if you haven't read yet, you absolutely need to.
> 
> je suis désolé - I'm sorry
> 
> tratas de aprender español, puta - you try learning Spanish, whore
> 
> aaj nahin, kutiya - not today, bitch
> 
> (And now you know how to insult someone in more languages. You're welcome.)

**Author's Note:**

> “Himay” means “Protection” in Arabic, and “Fida” is a unisex name that means “Redemption.”


End file.
